


Sheen

by esama



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Dragon Luna, Family, Friendship, Gen, Some OOCness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic makes strange mortal illnesses and stranger coping mechanism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on fanfiction.net around 2012  
> Proofread by Darlene and Wynne

There was a twinge of pain somewhere in Harry – he couldn't tell exactly where, he never could – as he made his way down a narrow path and through some bushes, going deeper into the Forbidden Forest with each step. He ignored the odd, ever lingering pain, and took in the forest around him. It was verdantly green with the early summer's growth, with beams of light coming down from the upper canopy, making the faintest of fogs around him glow – and all around him, the new green growth glimmered, when the light hit the dew on hundreds of thousands of pedals and stalks. It was beautiful – and it smelled even better.

"Should've thought to visit this place during the springtime earlier," he murmured, taking support on an ancient tree and jumping over a high root. Almost every time he had somehow ended up in the Forbidden Forest, it had either been late autumn, early winter, or late winter – when the greenery was withered, preparing to sleep, already sleeping, or just barely out of sleep. Seven years, six of them spent mostly in the castle, and he had missed how beautiful the place could become.

And the sounds too – there was a brook somewhere nearby, rippling and flowing with crystal clear sounds. There were birds seemingly _everywhere_ , singing joyfully and jumping from one tree to another – he startled a few of them out of the undergrowth even, and had to pause to admire them as they hurried up, up and away. And all the while the trees rustled, slow and ancient and soothing.

It was almost a pity that he wasn't there just to admire the place. It took something away from the enjoyment of it, the fact it wasn't the goal of his venture.

Sighing, Harry lowered his eyes and looked around him. There, a few broken branches so high that nothing that normally lived in the forest could've broken them. She had been here. With a smile, he started moving again, each step hurting somewhere deep inside, each breath like a needle inside him, but not as bad as it had once been.

And there, he could see it – a gleam of glimmering pearly white in the distance, just barely visible through the trees and young, excited shoots.

He paused for a moment, staring at the flash of colour, waiting. There was no movement; the shine didn't alter, so cautiously he continued to move, careful not to disturb the ground beneath him too badly, trying not to make noise. It wasn't that he was afraid, exactly – nor that he thought she'd flee or react badly at the sight of him. But he didn't want to alarm her, not now – not after all the time it had taken to find her.

More of the vast pearly expanse – higher than Hagrid's hut, longer than a Quidditch stand. The light played on it, glimmering and dancing, a sight more magical than many other things Harry had seen in the magical world. The closer he got, the more he saw, and the brighter, dreamier the colour got – reflecting a little bit of green here and there, when the light reflected from the greenery around her. And then, there, he could see a spike. She was with her back to him, and probably asleep, judging by her stillness, the way her side lifted and descended in an even, slow rhythm.

Then he was at her side, admiring her. It wasn't just the colouring, all pearly white like she had been made of the stuff, shining like someone had spent eons polishing her. But the form too: long, sleek, each scale precise and even, each descend and dib of muscle long and elegant. The massive wings, neatly folded at her sides, the translucent folds of skin overlapping each other, with bluish veins shining through. The spikes that crowned her spine were equally sleek – almost smooth, with elegant curves and sharp ends.

Swallowing, Harry turned to follow her spine, cautious with each step, until he got to her head, resting on top of a mossy rock, her eyes closed and her breathing coming out in slow gusts. She had a long face with a strong jaw, small horns framing it at the bottom, and longer ones crowning it at the top. Each scale of her face was arranged perfectly, each with its own soft glimmer, but all of them contributing perfectly to the overall image.

Harry had never been much for art, but she was as close to artistic perfection as he imagined any living being could be.

With a smile, he walked around her head, careful, careful, until he was at her front. She had her forelegs tucked to her chest, fingers curled and dangerous, sharp talons safely tucked away. And by heaven, she was big. She had been enormous from behind, but from the front he could see the whole extent of her without the wings standing in the way – long, from snout to tail tip she was probably as long as a proper Quidditch field and he could only wonder how wide her wing span was. How much did she weigh, he wondered. She was clearly too big to fit in the Hogwarts Great Hall with her great expanse, so her weight must've been enormous.

As he watched her, admiring her openly, she stirred, inhaled, and opened one dreamy blue eye. "What do you think of me, Harry Potter?" she asked, her voice deep and low but still feminine, rumbling inside her.

"You're… rather pretty, Luna," he admitted, smiling. Somehow he was not at all surprised that she managed to speak, even in her animagus form.

She made a sound that was almost a purr, and lifted her head, yawning enormously. Harry stared in open fascination at the wideness of her jaws, the rows of teeth, of fangs. She could've bitten the Basilisk he had fought in his second year in half with one single bite!

"Why are you here, Harry?" she asked, once she was done yawning, shifting so that she was lying more on her belly than her side, her forehands tucked to her chest in the manner Harry had seen cats do.

"Just felt like something I ought to do," he admitted, and gingerly sat on the mossy rock she had been using as her pillow. "Hogwarts is more or less fixed and the Ministry is standing on its feet, so I have the time to do rounds and see that everyone is okay." He looked thoughtfully up at her, as she gazed down at him with that old, familiar dreamy stare that didn't seem to really see him, but something around him. "How are you, Luna?"

"I'm very good. The forest is… very pleasant," she said, her tail curling along her side, so long that the tip came to rest against the rock beneath Harry. "You're not asking what you're really curious about, though."

"Like what?" Harry asked, and smiled. "If there was ever a witch to manage the animagus transformation of a dragon, it was bound to be you. And if there was ever a witch who would rather live as a dragon than as a witch, it was you. I'm not all that surprised."

"Aren't you?" Luna asked, sounding pleasantly surprised. "Daddy wasn't too happy," she admitted then, ducking her head a little and looking at her curled, scaly forehands. "He comes here every day to try and convince me to go back. And he keeps telling me that if I don't, someone will find me and I will be put in a dragon sanctuary against my will."

"He's only worried about you, I think," Harry said, stretching out his legs and sighing, turning his face up. There was a beam of warm light coming right down on him. "After what happened to you, the captivity at Voldemort's hands and everything, who can blame him?"

The dragon in front of him said nothing, looking up instead. For a long moment they both enjoyed the sunlight coming down at them, before she finally spoke again, "How are you, Harry? How is everyone?"

"They're fine," Harry said, smiling. "Hermione and Ron just got engaged, they're in Australia right now, looking for Hermione's parents. Kingsley Shacklebolt was voted in as the Minister for Magic. Neville is going to start an apprenticeship under Sprout next September. Hmm… Ginny is going on a world tour this summer with her brother Bill and his wife, Fleur…" he continued on a little longer, telling what he knew of everyone's plans.

Luna listened silently, her eyes straying from him to the forest around them. "And you?" she asked, once he was done. "There is something strange about you."

"Hm, maybe a bit," Harry agreed and chuckled, lifting a hand to his chest. "I'm dying," he admitted, making her flick her pale blue eyes at him. Quickly, he waved a hand dismissively. "It's not that bad, really. An after-effect of what happened during the battle. My magic's pretty much gone, now, and my body can't handle being without magic when there is magic around me, so it's…" he trailed away, trying to think of a good way of describing it. "It's trying to draw magic back into me, which is killing me."

Luna said nothing for a moment, just looked at him sadly. "I'm sorry," she then said. "I don't suppose there is a place on earth you could go, where it wouldn't happen?"

"Not really. Earth is inherently magical. Some places have more magic than others, but it's everywhere." Harry shrugged. "I'm not that bothered by it – I’ve still got a year or two. It's good enough for me."

"You've always been a bit fatalistic," she mused, lowering her head a bit and peering at him. "Is that why you're here – to say goodbye?"

Harry paused a bit at that. Fatalistic? Was he really? "Well, sort of, I guess," he admitted, smiling and reaching a hand to touch her snout. It was warm, and smoother than he had expected – softer, too. "I suppose I’m making my peace now, so that I can spend the next years enjoying the time I have left. Seems like a better idea than doing it at the last moment in a rush."

"I suppose that makes sense," the dragon rumbled, leaning into his palm just a bit, closing her eyes. Then she drew back and stood, stretching like a cat before unfolding her long, pearly wings and stretching those too. Harry admired her openly, leaning back on the rock to see the full expanse of those big wings.

"It must be really something, to be a dragon," he mused. "I don't suppose you intend to be human ever again?"

"I don't know. I might, but… no," she answered, sitting back on her haunches with her wings tucked in – they were so long that the ends of her wing tips rested on the ground behind her. "I don't much like being human, anymore. There were good points to it but…."

"Human beings are weak," Harry agreed to the unspoken statement sadly. She had been tortured rather badly, so badly that he hadn't heard a word of Blibbling Humdingers or Nargles from her since – so badly, that she had lost that odd, magical innocence she’d had. "Is it very different, being a dragon?"

"I think differently, now," she admitted thoughtfully, humming. "Not that much, but just enough that the memories don't bother me anymore, and I sleep easy. Dragons don't have nightmares, you know."

"I'm glad to hear it," the wizard said, a little jealous. "But isn't it a bit lonely, to be here all by yourself?"

"A little, but it's better here. Of course I can't go off as a dragon however I'd like, but I don't want to go to the sanctuaries. Dragons aren't normally… all that sociable," she mused, and then looked down at him. "And no one bothers me here, and no one would even if they knew I was here."

The wizard said nothing, just nodded. No one would ever bully a dragon, that much was true. It was still sad that the world had driven Luna to the point where she felt that such a defence was necessary. "Well, if it's what you want, and what you like, then I'm glad for you," he said. "Do you need anything here, though? Do you have food and comfort and whatnot? I have some money and little to do with it, so if you need anything…."

"I am fine. There are a lot of big spiders here that none of the other creatures much care for, and I've found I like the taste and the crunchiness," Luna admitted. "And there is some greenery I can eat here too. I am… content."

"I'm happy to hear it," Harry said.

"I wouldn't mind things to read," the dragon then murmured. "But I don't suppose there is a way I could, like this," she added, lifting one of her forehands and spreading her talons. She still had something like an opposable thumb, but each of her fingers was adorned by a long, curving talon. "I would rip any book I held to shreds, even if they were big enough for me to hold."

"I suppose," Harry agreed. "Unless it was a very special sort of book."

"Hm," Luna hummed, the sound rumbling like distant thunder. "Would you like to take a walk around?" she then asked. "I've found some interesting things here. There is a beautiful waterfall not far from here. Would you like to see it?"

"I'd love to," Harry said, and stood up.

 

* * *

 

It was mixture of the atmosphere, of Luna's presence and of what she had told him that made Harry return to the Forbidden Forest a week or so later, lugging with him a rather heavy backpack. The forest was as soothingly, serenely beautiful as it had been the last time – perhaps even more so. It was later in the day this time, and the sun was almost directly above the forest – and what had been a faint glow before was a shining splendour of colour this time.

The whole forest, with its thick moss, covering the ground, climbing up the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, seemed like something out of a fantasy. There were new flowers where there hadn't been before, and with the slight dampness of the fog of the previous time gone, the more mobile forms of life were on the move. Just with one glance, Harry could see countless bumblebees and numerous butterflies, fluttering from one gorgeously coloured flower to another. And the smell, previously moist and earthen, was dry and sweet now, full of the scent of the blooms.

"You’re back," Luna's voice greeted him before he even made it to her clearing. Blinking a bit, Harry looked around, trying to find her, before looking finally up. She was curled around one of the thickest trees – as thick as a house and no doubt as high as a skyscraper – and her wings were spread for balance.

"Yes. I have something for you," Harry admitted, easing the backpack from his shoulders and looking at her curiously. The tree was enormous, no doubt a thousand or more years old – and she, with her prodigious bulk, made it seem like a sapling, trying to hold up a heavy snake. "What are you doing?" he asked, amused.

"There was a bird's nest – it fell from the upper branches," she admitted, coming down in cautious and yet somehow elegant slithering motions, hind legs and tail almost wrapped around the tree as she eased down, her wings opening and closing for balance. "I lifted it back."

"Why didn't you just fly?" the wizard enquired, while easing himself down to the dry moss, sighing with relief. His chest ached.

"I can't spread my wings here properly, the trees get in the way and I don't want to damage them. I can get aloft from here, if I jump high enough, but flying beneath the branches is more difficult," she said and then she was on the ground, approaching him. "You have something for me?"

"Yes," he said. "I don't know how much you'll like it, but I can always get more," he added, as he turned back to the pack and opened it. Inside it there were three large scrolls. "I had them made," Harry explained, as he pulled one of them – as long as his arm, and about as thick – out.

"A scroll?" Luna asked, interested.

"Yes," he agreed, and then showed it to her. They weren't just scrolls, but slightly mechanised ones, and made very much special to Harry's careful designs. All the scrolls were covered by a metal shell with a sort of wheel at each end – and along the shell there was an opening, where a large metal ring protruded.

"It has an internal mechanism," he explained as Luna leaned down to look curiously. As she watched, he took hold of the metal ring, and pulled out the actual sheet inside. It wasn't paper or parchment, but stiff cotton fabric, supported by not quite a metal frame, but metallic thread sewn into the edges. "So, it opens like that. And to roll it shut, you turn the wheel," Harry added, taking hold of the shell and turning it, which inch by inch dragged the scroll back inside. "Not quite as handy as a book, but probably less likely to be easily broken, you know?"

"Oh, that is handy," she said, setting down and taking one of the scrolls he offered to her. "It must have been expensive to make."

"I got a discount." Harry shrugged and watched eagerly as she balanced the scroll on the palm of one talon adorned forehand, using the curving thumb-talon of her other hand to pull the sheet out. "This one doesn't have anything written in it, obviously," Harry said, as she looked at him confusedly. "The others are _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ and _The Tales of_ _Beedle the Bard_. I thought those two were as good as any to start with."

"Really?" she asked, while taking a careful, tighter hold of the shell so that she could try and figure out how to turn the wheel to roll the scroll back in. She eventually managed by using the very tips of her talons. The scroll slowly but steadily rolled shut, and she held it up, marvelling at it. "You shouldn't have."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Harry asked, shrugging. "And it was sort of fun, figuring out how to make it work," he then admitted. "I didn't make them myself, obviously, but I was there every step of the way. It was very interesting – and soon I'll be able to make them myself. Well, given that I have access to a loom, a forge, and materials, naturally."

Before this little project, he hadn't ever actually _created_ anything before. It was one of the many things he had planned to experience in what little remained of his life – and the experience had more than lived up to the expectations. Even the negotiations to do such an obscure edition of the two books had been interesting – as had been the printing process.

"Naturally," she mused, and then peered at him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said, grinning. "Now, give me a few days, and I'll have you a suitable stylus and ink pot big enough and you can start writing yourself, if you so wish."

Luna said nothing to that at first, just laid down the metal covered scroll very carefully, before looking at him. "Would you like to go flying, Harry?" she asked.

"Flying?" he asked, surprised. "Well. Sure, I'd love to fly, my favourite thing in the world – but I haven't got my broom with me."

"On my back, I mean," she said, letting out an amused snort that washed over him, warm and smelling like cinders. In the sunlight, her pale blue eyes glimmered.

"Uh… I'd love to!" he said, overcoming his surprise and quickly standing up, before looking at Luna's broad shoulders and thick neck worriedly. She was entirely too big for him to get a good grip on her with his calves and heels, the way one might've done with a horse – if anything, he'd be forced to sit cross legged on her back, or to lie down on his stomach, to stay level.

"Just hold onto my spikes very tightly," Luna said, while holding out her large forehand. Cautious, he stepped into the closure of her talons, and then took support from her forefinger, as she lifted him up and onto her shoulder. "Hold tightly," she said again as he quickly clambered to her spine, where he obligingly took hold of one of her long spine spikes.

Then, after she had gently pushed his backpack and the scrolls aside, she gathered herself tightly and sprang up, jumping and beating her wings all at once. The trees rustled around them, and for a moment Harry was completely covered with leaves and branches, before they were suddenly through, and aloft.

It was incredible. The flowing motion of the strong thrusts of her wings, the wind in his hair, tugging at his robes, and then the scene below. In seemingly no time at all, the ForbiddenForest turned into a distant mass of green that looked more like a carpet of rolling moss than trees. As Luna beat herself higher and higher, her wings eating the distance, the very mountains around them lost their size and shrank, until Harry could see Hogwarts, the Black Lake, and far, far beyond.

Then Luna turned, and circled, the air flowing over Harry in gusts and bursts, his hair whirling wildly and the wind nearly whisking his glasses away. His footing on her back was non-existent, and he had to cling for dear life, but that didn't take away the sheer magnificence of the feeling – of the sky, spinning and turning above with its soft, feathery clouds, the sun's light, coming now from the right and now the left of them, and her, glowing and glimmering like a living statue carved of pearl.

Helpless in his wonder and excitement, Harry let out a cry of sheer joy, which Luna answered with a rumbling roar, and then they were going up again, and then down, diving and weaving without form or rhythm, but with such wild elegance that he swore he had never before _lived_ fully.

He was shaking with fatigue and pain by the time Luna made to land, and his hands were numb, but it was disappointment which brought tears to his eyes once they finally touched ground.

"You are in pain," Luna noticed with some alarm.

"Don't worry about it – it was so worth it!" Harry assured with a breathless laugh, even as he slid down her shoulder and fell clumsily to the ground, his legs shaking too much to hold him. "That was incredible. Thank you."

"I’d hoped you'd like it – you always did seem to like Quidditch," she said, leaning her head down and nudging gently at his shoulder. "But I didn't want to cause you any pain. I'm sorry."

"It's alright, perfectly alright," he promised and impulsively smacked a kiss against the pearly scales. "And I am more or less in pain constantly these days – I'm used to it," he added, before changing the subject with, "Now, what sort of stylus do you think you could use? I'm thinking a normal sort of quill or fountain pen is pretty much out of the question."

Luna seemed to frown, but she thought about it. "I think a brush would work the best," she said then and held up her right forehand, examining its thickly scaled palm and short, talon adorned fingers thoughtfully. "Something that would conform to my fingers, I think – maybe with a hole that I could grip with my fore-talon?"

"I'll see what I can arrange," Harry promised, almost having caught his breath. "Do you have any preferences?"

She considered it for a moment. "I think I'd like books about art."

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Harry was back with more scrolls and something else – a long angular packet, holding several different versions of what he hoped would work as a brush for Luna, as well as a large ink stone – much more practical than a pot of liquid ink in her circumstances.

She accepted his gifts eagerly and tested them with infectious excitement – though only after they had spent a moment finding a suitable fallen tree for her to use as a table, the ground being too rough and soft with moss to be used. The most suitable bush turned out to be one with a sort of v-shape that conformed to the bones of her foretalon, settling into the crook of her thumb and taking support there – though her handwriting left something to be desired.

"I suppose I have to learn to write again," she murmured, eyeing her rough palm. "This hand isn't used to it."

"Well, I suppose you have all the time in the world," Harry said, smiling happily – her scribbles were, in a word, horrible and ludicrous, but he took probably an indecent amount of pleasure from the knowledge that it was thanks to him that she managed to produce them at all. It beat everything else he had done for any of his friends, even the party he had thrown for Hermione and Ron's engagement, or the wedding presents, costumes, and preparations he had already paid for. Even the magical portrait he had hired to be painted of Remus and Nymphadora for Teddy didn't quite compare.

"You're a good friend, Harry," Luna said after a moment of compassionate silence. "I wish I could do something for you."

"That's alright. Seeing my friends happy is happiness enough." Harry grinned, patting her side. "Besides, I get to see a _dragon_ write. And I got to fly on a dragon. You can't beat that."

"Didn't you fly on a dragon before – when you broke out of Gringotts?"

"I did, but it wasn't all that fun, really." Harry shrugged and sat down, rubbing his aching side. Then, sighing, he looked around at the clearing, surrounded by ancient trees where moss climbed up everything within sight, covering all things in a soft blanket of green. "This is a really nice place."

"Yes," Luna agreed, dipping the brush in the water-covered ink stone again, and then trying determinedly to draw a letter onto the scroll. "It will be cold by winter, though – I'm not sure if I will stay here."

Harry glanced up at her and then leaned against her side. "Where would you go?"

"Someplace warm," she said. "Antipodean Opaleyes prefer warmer climates."

"Is that what you are?" Harry asked, and she nodded. "Hm. A warmer climate – something like Africa? South America?"

Luna considered it thoughtfully, the tip of her pearly tail thumping gently against a nearby tree. "Maybe… New Zealand," she said "Or Australia."

"That's where Hermione and Ron are," the wizard murmured, closing his eyes. "They're looking for Hermione's parents," he added and then frowned. One other thing he had promised himself he'd do before he died was travel. "Getting out of the country as a dragon might be a bit difficult," he said then. "Trying to avoid being seen by muggles, and who knows how the wizards would react to it. Maybe try and put you into a dragon sanctuary."

The dragon said nothing to that for a moment, just kept on drawing as well as she could. "Well," she said finally. "It's not even summer yet, so it's not like I’m in a hurry to leave," she said. "By that time, I might've even changed my mind and retaken a human form."

Harry glanced at her, and didn't ask how likely that was going to happen – he doubted she would, and so did she, judging by her tone of voice. Instead, he leaned his head back and against her scales, closing his eyes and relaxing. "Maybe, once it comes to that, I'll go with you," he said.

"I think I'd like that," Luna admitted softly, and her tail came to curl against her side – and over his lap. Smiling, Harry hugged the thick, warm coil of her tail, and let himself fall into a cosy, comfortable stupor against her warm side.

Later they walked around the forest, and to the small pond with the waterfall, where she drank and occasionally washed herself. While he skipped stones on the pond's surface, wondering why life couldn't always be so simple as it seemed here, she lounged about in the sun, her wings spread wide to catch as much of the sunlight as possible.

"You know what?" he asked, looking at her. "You'd look magnificent with a bit of gold on you." She already looked like a living jewel – add a bit of jewellery to her, and she'd be impossible to look away from. A ring of gold around one of her horns, maybe, or a chain around her neck – or maybe a bracelet….

"Gold would be nice," she admitted with a yawn, her long, forked tongue flashing pink against the sunlight, her curved teeth gleaming. "But I don't think I have enough money for that. If I did, I'd get a heap of gold and sleep on it – it's supposed be very comfortable, for dragons."

Harry eyed her fondly. Jewellery, like art, wasn't something he normally paid any mind to. But he had several vaults full of mostly useless gold – people didn't let him pay for _anything_ anymore. All the shopkeepers in Diagon Alley just smiled and nodded and let him have everything for free. The only reason the smith who helped him build the scrolls had accepted payment was because the materials had to be procured. Sure, a bunch of the money would go to Teddy, but… he wanted to actually _use_ it too, just for the sake of using it – just for the _pleasure_ of making something out of it.

Turning it into jewellery seemed as good a way as any. And the idea that once he was gone, jewellery he bought – no, jewellery he had _designed_ or helped design – would be adorning something as magnificent as the draconic Luna Lovegood… he rather liked that.

"Mind if I take a measure of your neck?" he asked curiously.

"Not at all," Luna said, yawning again and almost purring in the heat, half fallen asleep already. As she dozed, he clambered about her, trying to take her measurements as well as he could. With her lying on her back the way she was and entirely too big and heavy to be shifted about for proper measurements, however, the task proved more or less impossible. In the end he gave up on the neck, measuring her horns and wrists and even her fingers instead, before falling victim to the constant aching inside of him, and giving up the whole task.

"That's the spirit," Luna rumbled sleepily, as he lay down on her warm chest, worn and too lazy to bother with anything more. Together they dozed off in the early summer sun.

 

* * *

 

Over the summer, Harry visited Luna often, adorning her not just with gold rings on her horns and around her wrists, but with a satchel she could use to carry her growing assortment of scrolls and writing utensils, as well as anything else he gave her. She accepted his gifts with a sort of baffled delight, looking at him a bit strangely every time he brought her something new, be it paint and canvas or some other trinket he liked to see her wear.

"I will not become human again, you know," she said finally around mid-summer, when he had spent a while talking about Hermione's and Ron's upcoming wedding. They had found Hermione's parents, and wanted to seal their deal while Harry was still in a state to attend; which, with Harry's internal pain growing worse every day, and now forcing him to rely on a cane as he walked, wasn't all that long a period of time.

"I know," he agreed, leaning against her foreleg comfortably, rubbing one hand wearily against his chest, tight and loose and burning beneath his skin, inside his bones.

For a moment Luna was silent, just looking down at him. "Why are you giving me all these things?" she then asked. "When you know I won't be human again?"

Harry blinked and looked up, taking a split second to admire her visage – there was a sheen of green gently glazing the side of her face, each pearly scale holding its own green tinted glow as they reflected a nearby oak tree. She looked confused, though, her pale eyes narrowed in thought. "You think I'm courting you?" he asked, and then laughed. "You're lovely, sure, and I love you, but I'm not trying to buy your affections."

"Then why?" she demanded to know, lowering her head and staring at him intently.

"Because I can," he said and shrugged. "You're not the only one, mind you. I'm probably going to buy Hermione and Ron a house, if I can manage it without their families noticing and objecting. And I've given Ginny about as many shiny things as you, except not quite as big," he added, patting the rings around her wrist, which jingled and clinked rather prettily when she moved. "I'm getting rid of my money, you see. In the most enjoyable way possible."

"Oh," she said, blinking. "Why not donate to charities? Or maybe to Hogwarts or to the Ministry?"

"Because it's not as much fun – and there aren't that many charities I'd support. I've left some small sum to St. Mungo’s, but that's about it, really," he said, and smiled fondly up at her. "I haven't appreciated people enough, so far. And I've found that I rather like giving things to my friends – and I really like pretty things. I don't have that much time to see new things, so I adorn those at hand with as much prettiness as I can. Like you.

"Besides," he added, grinning. "I haven't spent time on shopping sprees, and I've found I like those too! Spending money is fun."

She snorted softly, before lowering her head to the ground, tilted so that she could still look at him with one eye. "You're more like a dragon than I am, Harry Potter," she said, amused. "You're going to run out of money soon and then what will the last months of your life be like?"

"I doubt it," Harry said and sighed. "My godfather left me all of his worldly possessions – which included a whole family's worth of Gringotts vaults. A very prideful pureblood family's worth – most of them misers to boot. I could cover you in gold and I'd still be left with ten times as much."

"I see," Luna murmured and was quiet for a moment, just looking at him. "I'm going to miss you when you're gone," she then said, sighing so heavily that the breath nudged at his feet.

"Good," he said, reaching his hand up and running a hand along her neck, his fingertips dipping between her shining scales. "I'd like to be remembered and missed, maybe even as something else than just the Boy Who Lived. Remember me as that foolish boy who gave you a lot of foolish gifts, and I'll be _very_ happy."

She closed her eyes and sighed again. "Maybe you should spend some money trying to figure out how not to die?" she suggested. "Then you could live long enough for me to remember you as that foolish old man who gave me a lot of foolish gifts."

Harry smiled sadly. He had – or would've, if the Ministry hadn't spent every effort in trying to _heal_ him, doing it all free of charge, most of the healers and magical scientists working without pay, without rest, without holidays, until they all came to the same conclusion: there was no way, no way at all. His body was working against him, and any attempt at curing him would only kill him faster.

"You're the only one who visits me, you know," Luna said. "Aside from Daddy, and his visits aren't… They aren't happy."

"I'm sorry," Harry said sadly. "I could bring someone here, maybe? I'm sure Ginny would like to see you – I haven't told her where you are, because I thought you wanted to be alone. And Hermione and Ron too. Ron's brother Charlie works with dragons, too, I'm sure he'd love to meet you, like this."

Luna said nothing, just closed her eyes. "You're limping now," she said then, peaking one eye open and glancing at the cane Harry had discarded in the moss. "You're hurting more. Will we be able to go to Australia like you promised?"

The wizard hesitated. Hermione's and Ron's wedding would be later that summer. With the progression of his condition so far, he doubted he'd have the strength afterwards. "I…" he trailed away, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I will try, but I want to see Hermione and Ron married before I go – I'm going to be the best man," he said, smiling sadly before shifting to his knees and crawling to her head, throwing his arms around her. "I can make sure that you can get there, though. Notice me not charms, or maybe a wizard escort who would keep muggles from noticing you – Kingsley could arrange it for me, I'm sure."

She let out a huff and nudged her head up a bit, bringing his knees up from the ground for a moment. "You are a foolish boy," she muttered, and he kissed the bridge of her nose gently.

"Maybe I'll have them bury me here – or I could have a tomb of stone like Dumbledore," he said thoughtfully, glancing up. "It'd be a beautiful resting place. Not, of course, if you mind," he added, glancing at her eyes, chuckling. "It might be creepy to live here, if there's a grave."

"I wish you were a little less morbid, Harry," she complained softly and he kissed her snout again.

 

* * *

 

Hermione and Ron's wedding was as beautiful as Harry had hoped it would be, and he got to do all the duties and pay all the respects a proper best man ought to do. Afterwards, once he had given them all his blessings as well as the keys and the deed to their new house despite all their objections, he limped his way out, too exhausted to take part in the after-wedding celebrations, too pained to rejoice to the proper full extent.

Instead, he made his way to the nearest fireplace, then to Hogsmeade, and finally to the ForbiddenForest. It was late by then, darker than it usually was when he made his way to Luna, but he didn't mind – even during the night time, summer in the forest was beautiful and to his delight he found that there were fireflies and _fairies_ about, the former flickering above bushes and the small trickling streams that ran through the forest, and the latter chasing them, catching them into little translucent satchels that looked like they had been woven from spider webs. There were a few enthusiastic fairies carrying satchels with as many as a dozen fireflies inside them – and it was really a sight to behold.

There was a mysterious, fantastic quality about the night, and the pain of his body eased a bit as he made his way through the flickering light show of the forest, enjoying every moment of it and wishing he could paint, that he had a camera, anything. It wasn't just the glimmering light of the fireflies, or the fairies, but how they reflected from the stream, how the entire forest was very gently lit by their frolicking. It seemed like a whole different forest from daytime – and worlds away from that terrifying place of his school years, when he had met only horrors there.

"You’re up late," Luna greeted him with her rumbling voice as he entered her clearing. She too, it seemed, was watching the fireflies.

"Hermione and Ron got married today. The ceremony was beautiful, but a bit exhausting," he said, coming to her side and climbing onto her forearm to rest. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed, willing the pain to lessen. "Today is a good day," he said happily, thinking back to the ceremony. He would've liked to be there for the dancing, maybe, maybe even to dance with Ginny and Lavender and Hermione too, of course, but… he had become slow and clumsy and he hadn't wanted to remind them of the eventual on their happy day by displaying it like that.

"That's nice to hear," the dragon murmured, looking down at him. "Are you alright?"

"A bit winded," Harry admitted, patting her scales consolingly. "It's nothing to worry about. Tell me, does the forest always look like this at night?" he asked, turning his attention to the frolicking fairies again.

"Mostly, yes," Luna admitted. "But sometimes the unicorns come out during the night. I saw a mare with a foal a few nights back – they were quite beautiful."

"I bet," he said wistfully – the only time he had seen a unicorn, the poor beast had already been dead. "Tell me about it – what did they do?"

Luna told him, her deep voice rumbling softly in the darkness, fitting well with the atmosphere. The unicorns had come just before the fireflies and drank from a small stream near her clearing. She had seen them before, but they were rather rare – most of the creatures steered clear of her, except for the spiders that kept coming into her territory despite how many of them she ate. They weren't as smart as proper Acromantulas, being some sort of crossbreed. "When they noticed I was awake, they galloped off," she added softly, thoughtfully. "I think there might be some unicorn hairs in that bush over there, though – the foal stumbled through it, and I think his tail got caught."

"Really?" Harry asked, and eagerly slid down from her foreleg, making his stumbling way to the bush. And, indeed, he did find a few silvery strands there, tangled in the brambles of the bush – untangling them took a bit of effort, but it was worth it once he had them free and in his hand.

"How many unicorns are there in this forest, do you know?" he asked thoughtfully.

"A few dozen, I think. The ForbiddenForest has one of the biggest unicorn populations in the world," Luna said, watching him as he returned to her side. She peered at the silvery strands in his hands before looking at him. "What will you do with them?"

"I don't know," he said. "They're pretty strong, aren't they? Maybe I'll use them to wrap a gift to someone. That should be a pretty nice sight."

"Hmm," she hummed, and nosed at him until he climbed up to her forearm again – she didn't like to let him sit on the ground anymore. "I have been thinking about something," she admitted then, looking at him steadily. "Have you ever heard of alternate realities?"

 

* * *

 

Harry hadn't ever heard of alternate realities. He didn't even know what they were – but the Unspeakables who had been working non-stop since Voldemort's defeat to discover a miracle cure had more than heard. When Harry brought Luna's question and idea to them, asking if there could be such a thing as a magicless world, almost all activity in the Department of Mysteries seemed to come to an end.

It was the start of something that Harry was all too happy to escape to the ForbiddenForest from. He didn't like to think about the suddenly thoughtful looks, considering, not merely hopeful but _calculating_. He had accepted his death, and he had been almost looking forward to enjoying his last days on earth to the fullest. There was something infinitely _freeing_ about knowing that your death was ahead of you; it gave one certain freedoms, and a sort of confidence Harry hadn't had before – and the idea that maybe, possibly….

It was surprisingly scary.

"I don't know if I'd like it much, living in some other world where there isn't any magic," he admitted quietly, in the shelter of Luna's wings. It was raining, a steady, smooth downpour that drummed against the skin of Luna's wings, but from which he was perfectly safe. It was strange and humbling, to be sitting in the middle of a rain-washed forest and be so dry and cosy – to watch how the water trickled down the moss of the tree trunks and dribbled from the leaves above. There was a puddle not far from him, rippling as the water hit it.

"It wouldn't be the same," he added, reaching one hand out and beyond the shelter of Luna's wing to catch a droplet in his palm.

"But you'd live," she pointed out.

"Out of reach of my friends and all the things I love. I don't know if I'd want a life like that," Harry murmured and sighed. "Though, I suppose, if it'd be anything like this world, I could make new friends, but… it wouldn't be the same. I love _this_ world, and I… well I really wouldn't mind dying here, however soon it's bound to happen."

The dragon said nothing, staring into the rain instead – she had covered her head with her other wing, and was thus sheltered from the droplets as well. It gave her an oddly magnificent profile, with the wing stretched out like she was about to leap aloft at any moment. "I like magic," she admitted suddenly. "But I don't like this world."

Harry said nothing to that, just looked at her sympathetically. Whatever had happened to her in the Malfoy Manor had broken something in her, something unspeakably precious and fragile, and he mourned its loss as badly as he wished he didn't understand it. His _something precious and fragile_ had been broken long before he had even realised he had it, long before he had ever entered Hogwarts, and he couldn't imagine what it was like, to have had that for so long and then….

"It's not all bad," he said softly. "Aside from some bad things, it's still a pretty nice world."

"Maybe. But I don't like it anymore," she said, sighing and looking up, up to the darkness of the leaf coverage far above them, beyond which the rain clouds rolled and swarmed. "I loved this world so much, but I can't… not anymore. Something's gone and I can't get it back. If I could, I'd leave it. I'd leave it, and love a new world."

"And it doesn't seem at all lonely to you?" he asked, making her turn her pale blue eyes, as big as dinner plates, to him.

"Not if I had good company," she said, and reached forward to nudge his shoulder with her snout. "I could be pretty and you could be foolish. It could be nice, couldn't it?"

"Luna," he said gently, even as he wrapped his arms around her snout as much as he could – which was to say, not at all. "You still have family here. Your dad. And friends – Ginny would like to see you again, you know. Hermione too – and I'm sure there are others."

"It's not the same anymore. And Daddy is…" She sighed and closed her eyes. "I loved him too, but I can't anymore. It's not the same anymore, and it _hurts_ , to see him. That's why I thought I'd like to leave, to go somewhere warm and maybe never come back. Because it would be… different."

Harry said nothing; he just stroked the pearly scales of her cheek, and thought. He thought of the things he had planned to do – most of which he no longer had the strength for. He thought of the things he had done so far, the gifts he had given to his friends despite their objections – the magnificent robes he’d had made for Kingsley, and the phoenix egg he had spent an average man's fortune to buy, to give to Fred. The many, many things he had given to Ginny, in apology for not being able to love her, or to live the rest of his life with her. The money and effort he had spent, turning the Burrow into a mansion, the small grounds into a true estate. The preparations for Teddy's future he had made. Everything.

And then he thought of the things he had given up on. Like reaching his twentieth birthday, his thirtieth. Of learning an occupation and having a career – of having a family and making a home. Of getting a hobby, something silly and maybe less than productive. Maybe writine a book, keeping a journal, building a big scrapbook about things that had happened to him along the years -- and then, in his later years, using it to bore various kids to tears.

Harry sighed, resting his cheek against Luna's snout. He had accepted his death, and maybe even delighted in it, in the deadline that gave him certain freedoms, certain strengths. But… "I'm not as fatalistic as you think, I suppose," he admitted. "I don't… actually want to die."

She let out a happy sound, and nearly crushed him against her as she nudged at him joyfully. "Well," he gasped, once she had withdrawn and apologised. "It gives me something new to prepare for. Tell me, what would you be likely to need in an alternate world?"

"Depends on the world," she said, gazing at him fondly.

"Hm. I wonder if I could demand some specifics about whatever world they send me to – us to," he mused, patting her forearm and thinking about it seriously now. "It would be nice, if you could fly in the other world freely, without having to worry. If there is no magic, it might be a bit problematic, living there as a dragon…."

 

* * *

 

It turned out that he could – and it wasn't even all that difficult to find a suitable sort of reality. Apparently, there was an infinite amount of them and if he imagined a suitable place, the place probably existed – and magic was very good at finding things. Even alternate realities.

"And there is a way for both of us go, me and her?" Harry asked, worriedly. "She’ll never fit in the whole of the Ministry, not to mention coming down into the Department of Mysteries."

"Neither will the portal," the Unspeakables admitted. It turned out that they needed even more space than Luna did – and were already in the process of negotiating for the building of the portal on Hogwarts’ grounds, where there'd be enough space. And they were more than happy to go through the trouble, what with Minister Shacklebolt breathing down their necks, as well as the whole of the magical nation wanting to save their hero's life, _somehow_.

It took Harry quite a bit to adjust to the idea, however. The preparations he made gave him the time to turn his thinking around, but not completely. All the things he had planned to complete, he completed now – the paperwork for Teddy's inheritance, the full details of his own will, the rights of his biography of all things – and then there were so many new things to do. Like a whole new life to prepare for. And yet….

The concept that he'd need clothing and supplies and maybe money as well as some means of surviving – food, hygiene products, maybe some means of tending to wounds, and where would he sleep? – was oddly new and strange. And just a bit exiting. But there were problems – whatever world he would end up in, he would have to manage living through solely muggle means, so there would be no handy magic to ease his life, no obliviating charms, no notice-me-nots, nothing. Nor would there be shrinking charms for his luggage, or feather light charms, which made trying to figure out what and how to pack rather difficult.

At least up until Luna pointed out somewhat exasperatedly that, "Good grief, Harry, I could probably carry your whole _house_. And no, I don't mind carrying your things."

And she didn't – though it did beg the question of _how_. It wasn't like there were backpacks designed for dragons, after all. Hermione suggested some sort of saddle or rigging that would let them attach bags or satchels, Ron suggested that they use nets which she could carry or something like that. Charlie suggested using both ideas, and that she could very well carry something using her front legs too, if it came to that. "Dragons tend to carry heavy loads with their forelegs, food to their nests and whatnot, so she'll have easy time handing a container of some sort," he explained.

So, Harry set out about making them – first a harness for the things she'd carry, then the netting. Since Luna couldn't easily leave the ForbiddenForest, he did all the measuring, clambering about her with the longest measuring cord he had ever seen, jotting everything carefully down. She was a good eighty feet in length from nose to tail tip with a wing span too wide for the cord, which he noted with some wonder. She was even bigger in numbers than she was in person.

"Are dragons normally this big?" he wondered, thinking back to the Hungarian Horntail he had once fought – or flied on in an attempt to snatch the fake egg from her clutch. She hadn't been even half as big as Luna.

"Well… no, I don't suppose they are," she admitted, looking down at herself, at her chest and then at her side, and at the wings she couldn't quite spread fully. "I wanted to be big, though. Is it a problem?"

"Not at all," he promised with amused affection and shook his head. Well, dogs weren't normally as big as Padfoot had been, either, so he couldn't really blame her. Not that he would've at any rate – she was perfect just the way she was.

The making of the harness was a joint effort between him, Charlie, and a magical leatherworker, who fashioned the rig out of dragon hide and chain. Together they worked around her six limbs to leave her with all the mobility she normally had, but in a way that let them assign as much cargo upon her as she could comfortably carry. Not that it was needed – Harry wasn't about to bring _that_ much with him, so it wasn't all precisely necessary, but… perhaps it would be later.

"Should we make a saddle for you?" Charlie wondered, while they were finishing the harness. "Or some sort of howdah, maybe?"

"I'm not sure if that's necessary," Harry said, frowning. He didn't much like the idea of riding on Luna like she was some sort of animal. "Just make sure that I have something to hold onto if absolutely necessary and that will be enough."

And then there were the other things –things Harry eventually escaped from to the ForbiddenForest, where he could sort out his mind about them in Luna's serene company. Like Ron and Hermione, who were considering coming with him. The people Kingsley wanted to hire go with him – either as his bodyguards or his servants, or probably both. And of course, there was a whole bunch of people who didn't want him to go at all, and thought that he should stay and wait for the specialists to figure out a cure.

"They like the idea of you living, after everything," Luna mused, when he explained it all to her. "But they don't much like the notion you living somewhere beyond their reach. Do you think Hermione and Ron would really come?"

"Of course they won't. Even if they managed to fully convince themselves that they actually wanted to, I'd never let them." Harry snorted, resting a cheek against her scales, eyes closed. "They have their lives ahead of them here – Hermione has a great career, and so has Ron, regardless of what they think. I won't let them ruin that."

She hummed and nosed at his shoulder gently. "Would you _like_ them to come?"

"No, not really," he admitted, and opened one eye to look at her, smiling. "I think you and I will be fine by ourselves, don't you?" he asked, and reached out a hand to stroke along the smooth lines of her cheek, drumming the scales with his fingertips. "Besides, my adventures with them are over, and I think they're looking forward to a quiet life more than they realise."

Luna hummed, closing her eyes for a moment before lifting her head and looking up at the leaf coverage high above. "I would like some adventures, maybe. So as long as they aren't the bad sort."

"Me too," the wizard – who wasn't really a wizard anymore, it had been months since he had managed his last spell – admitted. "Tell me, what sort of world would you like to go to, if you could choose every aspect of it?"

"I don't know about _every aspect_ – it wouldn't be that much fun, if I knew everything about it beforehand," she murmured and then glanced down. "Something not completely discovered or conquered. The world here is so… _known,_ " she said, the tip of her tail, resting now far from Harry, making a waving motion. "Everything is known, or near as. Every corner inhabited."

"Hm. So, something wild and unexplored?" Harry asked, amused, and considered it. Maybe that was why she had wanted to go to Australia – there was so much space where so few people lived. "I think I'd like that too," he said, and wondered if the Unspeakables would mind if he made a few more demands about the world they'd be sending him to.

 

* * *

 

Ron and Hermione did relent, and so did Kingsley, and soon everyone – the whole world, it seemed – knew that Harry Potter was going to leave their reality with a dragon animagus, and they were going to go without further company. It started a surplus of gifts and fan-mail sent Harry's way, as well as endless amounts of suggestions, especially when someone leaked the minute details about the sort of world he and Luna had in mind.

"Some of the suggestions aren't that bad, actually," Harry admitted to Luna, having spent a day with the whole of the Weasley family sorting through the mail. "Spices, tea, things like that. And of course, I was already going to bring a loom so that I can make more scrolls, and the basic metal working equipment and all, but I didn't even think of bringing a spindle or a spinning wheel. And people have sent me sacks, _sacks_ of seeds and even some seedlings."

"Seeds?" she asked, amused.

"Yeah. Most of them of magical plants, which won't even grow in a magicless world," he said, shaking his head. "It's almost like they think I'm going to turn into a woman from the middle ages, just because I've found I like working with my hands."

"Well, if the world will be like we want it to be, it's rather unlikely that there will be any stores around, so I suppose having something like seeds would be a good idea," Luna mused. "Tell me, what sort did they send, aside from the magical ones? I wouldn't mind doing some gardening – I used to, back at home, but…. And who knows, we might need to grow our food before long."

Which, of course, led to people sending them _farming tools_ , not to mention the things Mrs. and Mr. Weasley tried to press onto Harry – tools from their own farm, now much bigger thanks to all the acres of land Harry had bought them. And of course, then there were guidance books – most of those from Hermione – which included titles like _Early Colonising and What Went Wrong_ and _How to Survive a Hundred Years on a Desert Island,_ and _One Thousand Common herbs and Fungi_ and _Plain Handy Tricks That Will Save Your Life_ and so forth.

"This is totally putting a damper on our adventure plans," Harry murmured, but he couldn't exactly sneer at the gifts – not when there was every likelihood that he'd be blessing Hermione for each and every one of them before the end. "I fear you're going to be pretty heavily loaded, though. What with food, clothing, a couple of tents, cooking utensils, _farming tools_ for god's sake and all of this too… and of course, all your things," he added, thinking of the growing amount of scrolls, not to mention the writing utensils, the ink stones, the oil paints he had gotten for her, and the canvases….

"I don't mind, so as long as I can still fly," Luna assured.

In the meantime, the construction of the portal had begun on the field not far from the Quidditch Pitch, just beside the ForbiddenForest. The thing, even in its unfinished state, reminded Harry rather eerily of the Archway in the Chamber of Death in the Department of Mysteries – it had the same shape, even if it was some fifty times larger and mostly made of wood, rather than stone. The Unspeakables were raising it bit by bit, one wooden foot at a time – and carving every inch full of runes and symbols, all the while their fellows covered the area around the soon-to-be-portal with a wooden amphitheatre, likewise rune encrusted.

"It will only work once, of course," the Unspeakables said. "Wood is a good material for conducting magic, but not very durable. We expect the whole thing will simply collapse once you're through."

"And where, precisely, will it send us?" Harry asked, while peering up at what would be the top of the wooden archway. It was more than big enough for Luna, he was happy to see. A giant could've used it as a doorway without any trouble, even.

"That's up to you. It's not like the Archway of Death – this thing will answer to your specific desires. It will take you somewhere very like the place you _want_ to go."

Which was a bit exhilarating and terrifying all at once, because the notion that he might have a stray thought and end up somewhere completely different from what he wanted was very quick to rear its head. Luna seemed to have no such worries, though. "Magic works very well with wishes – all magic is in the end wish based," she said. "I imagine it will work very well."

As time went by and the archway was bit by bit brought closer to completion, so were Harry's preparations. The paperwork was done, Grimmauld Place sealed to await the time when Teddy would be old enough to decide what to do with the place, all his goodbyes had been said again and again. Luna's harness was done – as was the two hundred pages long guide book of how it had been made and how it could be remade or repaired. And, of course, the luggage itself was starting to pile up in Hogwarts' warehouse, just waiting for the day they'd take their leave.

A week before that took place, Harry came to the ForbiddenForest like he now did daily, only to find that Luna already had company. "Sweetheart, darling," Xenophilius tried to coax his daughter. "This thing, what you intend to do, surely… sweetheart, you cannot go, of course not – not my little girl –"

"Daddy," the dragon said, her voice awkward and embarrassed but not for her own sake. "I _am_ going. I have told you I'm going dozens of times now. And I am not going to change my mind."

"But if you only gave it a little time… I'm sure you'd realise… it's foolishness Luna, foolishness!"

"Like Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?" she asked, somehow sharply and wistfully all at once. "And Wrackspurts and Billywig propellers – and all the other things that were never real?"

There was a moment of silence, and Harry leaned against the trunk of an ancient oak, rubbing his chest awkwardly and looking away, not wanting to eavesdrop but doing it all the same.

"They… they are real. If you would just give me time, darling, I'd prove it to you. All of it," Xenophilius said plaintively. "And then you'd believe again and everything would be like it was again and –"

"No. All the time in the world wouldn't be enough, not for that," Luna said, and there was a change in the light as she shifted, spreading her wings. "Go away, Daddy. Go home, and… just go away."

"But _Luna_ …."

It was the last thing said – there was a great gust of air and the trees rustled and bent in objection as Luna took wing, leaving her father on the ground. Harry stayed motionless where he stood, hidden behind the tree trunk, until Xenophilius finally stopped peering up at the sky and left with a heavy sigh and head hung low. The younger man might've felt sympathy for him, if he hadn't been so firmly on Luna's side; it wasn't precisely Xenophilius' fault, after all, but the man probably felt it was.

Luna came down only after good hour of flying, by which time Harry was dozing in a sunlit patch of dry moss. "I'm thinking I could bring Charlie here and we could try the harness on," he said while she curled around him, her forelegs resting on her tail to form a perfect, unbroken loop of pearly iridescence. "It's quite pretty, actually. I had the original leather replaced with Swedish Short-snout hide – it's sort of silver-blue, almost teal in colour – which will go beautifully with your hide."

"You really are more of a dragon than I am, at times," she muttered, even while resting her head so tightly against his side that he could hear how the air travelled down her throat as she breathed. "Don't think I haven't noticed you taking more measurements of my horns and neck. And you've been sketching again. The last time you did, I ended up with a crown."

"Ah, well, it wasn't a crown, really," Harry said, not even bothering to be embarrassed. "And I took it back to be remade, anyway."

"What are you having made this time, then?"

"Just a little of this and that." A _lot_ of this and that, actually. Even after all the willing and giving away, he was still left with a minor fortune, and it just stood to reason that he couldn't bring Galleons or Sickles or Knuts along, so… he was turning them all into jewellery for Luna. It was just common sense – easier to carry, and they'd be rather less likely to get stolen when worn by a great big dragon.

"They'll be pretty, just believe me," he assured her, making her snort softly.

 

* * *

 

Then the portal was finished. It was and wasn't very impressive all at once – it was tall and imposing, but not all that good-looking, being made of wood the way it was, and being rather ill-fitting against the visage of the magnificent castle of Hogwarts. But, it was still finished, functional, and according to the Unspeakables, just waiting for activation.

The day of the activation wasn't the day of the portal's completion, however. Harry had to do a few interviews and endure a two hour long session on the Wizarding Wireless, saying his goodbyes and offering his gratitude and well wishes to the wizarding world in general – and then he had to stand on ceremony while Kingsley gave him every medal he could think of, and watch a statue of him that was to be placed in the entrance hall of the Ministry was publicly revealed. Overall, it was a gruelling, embarrassing and rather tiresome day, and he was very glad once it was over, closing with a stately dinner and an equally stately ball, with all of the magical world's finest and fiercest there.

The next day, Hogwarts was _crawling_ with people –reporters, well-wishers, random people Harry had never met, and four hundred Hogwarts students, at the front of whom were Harry's own old classmates, Hermione and Ron holding the key positions in the crowd. Harry of course saw nothing of it at first; he was too busy with Charlie in the forest, getting Luna's rigging into order to make it as comfortable as possible. It was, he was very happy to find, _very_ pretty – gleaming bluer with silver buckles and rivets. It was rather sad that the satchels, sacks, boxes, barrels and everything else it would be loaded with weren't anywhere near as nice.

"Oh, Harry," Luna said fondly, when he expressed this lamentation. "You've become a perfect little magpie."

"Little?" Harry asked, offended. "Easy for you to say!"

"She's right, though. One would think you'd be more interested in the functionality than the appearance of the thing," Charlie noted with some amusement. "It's all girly nonsense, you know."

"Dying opens one's eyes, and I've found my eyes delight in nice things," Harry said with as much pride as he could muster. "And life is too short to deny oneself life's simple pleasures."

Luna snorted, shaking her head – which brought a musical jingling from the rings on her horns, firmly secured except for the plates and chains and rings dangling from them. Harry chose to ignore this form of nonverbal objection, and instead went back to admiring the harness.

Then there was the loading. Once the harness was secure and didn't hinder Luna elsewhere, she took flight and for the first time flew intentionally where people could see her. Harry rode on her back, holding tightly onto the harness as they flew and marvelling at the scenery below with an aching chest that wasn't completely because of his condition. He would miss the sight of the ForbiddenForest from above, and in general. He had come to know it pretty well, with Luna.

 Then they were already at Hogwarts, flying over the crowd, over the portal, over the entire castle to where the warehouses stood – and in front of them, their luggage secure in their containers.

As Luna landed, the house elves who had volunteered to help her load skittered backwards with alarm, looking a little nervous even after seeing Harry and Charlie come down from her back. They were still a bit cautious as Harry beckoned them closer so that they could start filling the nets and securing the satchels - and it took continuous approval and encouragement to keep them working, even though Luna paid them no mind and instead looked around with a peculiar expression.

"Hogwarts looks bigger from this perspective, but not as big as I remember," she murmured, while Harry and Charlie lifted one of the larger boxes into the net – the one holding a variety of farm tools Harry wasn't sure he'd ever actually use, but which he was glad to have with them.

"Having second thoughts?" Harry asked, pausing in the loading long enough to come to her front to seek eye contact.

"None," she said, and nudged at him fondly. "But I think I will paint the castle one day, if there is time. And the forest too."

"I'm sure you will have all the time in the world," Harry said, and returned to the packing. It took a while longer to get everything on board, and a while longer still to secure it so that it wouldn't drop by accident, but in the end he, Charlie, and Luna all pronounced themselves satisfied, and the house elves quickly vanished, their unnerving task done.

"I imagine there will be a speech, once we get to the portal – I think I saw Kingsley there, too," Harry said, while Charlie headed off to tell the Unspeakables that they were about ready. "And then there will probably be photographs and singing if we're unlucky and then we go through."

"Alright," the dragon said, stretching out her long wings and beating them once, twice, before settling them down along her back, over many of the straps that ran around her shoulders and down along her neck and sides. "I hope the other world will be warm," she then added, peering up and at the clouds gathering above them. "And sunny."

"I think it will be more than that," Harry said, patting her chest and then turning to walk away from the warehouses and along the yard to go around the castle, and towards the scene of the actual event. He still limped – if he'd had to be here any longer, he'd be forced to use crutches sometime soon – and his whole being ached horribly. "Come on," he said, grinning, ignoring his own weaknesses and looking at her with open delight. "Time to start on our adventure."

"Yes," she said, dreamy blue eyes twinkling in the faint light screening through the clouds, and followed him, all sleek, elegant motion, nearly soundless despite all her size and weight.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing that Harry saw of his new world was enough to halt him on his feet and leave him there, staring. There was a vast expense of land right in front of him, that seemed to continue endlessly, tinted with red and spotted with green where plants grew in ramshackle groups here and there, looking more like bushes and such from where he was looking at them, all lit in the queer, humbling orange glow of the descending sun. It looked more like a photograph he might've seen at some point than an actual living _scene_ right in front of him, and yet there it was, as far as his eyes could see, looking to be very nearly on fire with the sunlight.

Blinking, he whisked his glasses off, rubbed at his eyes, replaced his glasses, and then took another look. Nothing changed, except maybe everything was a bit redder, and the scenery even vaster. Staring, Harry swallowed; he had never seen so much… _space_ in one glance.

"It's very pretty. Nothing like the ForbiddenForest," Luna said, taking a step forward and coming to his side, throwing a shadow over him. The orange glow of the sun made her glow, as if lit up by some inner fire that screened through her scales. "It is warmer too."

"Warmer? Yes," Harry said, and only then he noticed that there was suddenly no pain. More hesitant than happy, he lifted his hand to his chest and took a deep breath, waiting for it. The air was dry, warm, smelled like earth and something he couldn't quite name, and there was no pain. Still cautious, he took a step forward, dropping his cane as he did.

"Oh," he said, and then laughed, patting his chest. "Oh, I like _this_!"

"What?" the dragon asked, a little distracted: she had been peering at something in the distance. "What is it?"

"It's gone. The… the thing, the pain, it's gone," he answered and, just because he could, he jumped. Then he whirled where he stood, spreading his arms wide, and took a few jumping steps forward, and then back.

There was no pain at all: the hollow feeling inside his chest was completely gone, the ache in his bones disappeared as if it had never been there at all. The tingling of his skin, the odd, pulsing weariness of his muscles, the strain and weakness of his sinews; all the things that had made his breath so short before, his steps stumbling, _gone_. His hands, which before had been almost too weak to hold a glass of water, now felt as steady and as strong as they ever had; he almost felt like turning cartwheels!

"What are you _doing_?" Luna asked, turning her attention to him completely when, just out of sheer delight, he really _did_ try turning cartwheels. It turned out to be a bad idea all around; he’d never turned a cartwheel in his life, and he was wearing rather heavy and plentiful robes, and thus he ended up crashing down on his side, banging his elbow against the red sandstone below and straining some muscle in his shoulder.

"Ow," Harry complained rather happily – because even this pain wasn't anything like what it had been for so long now, sharp and stinging but already fading, and more natural than the constant aching of before.

"Are you alright?" the dragon asked, leaning her head down and nudging at him with her snout. She sounded more exasperated than worried, though, and a bit amused.

"Just lovely," Harry answered, grinning widely while taking support from her muzzle and levering himself up. "Merlin, I'd completely forgotten it could feel like this. Like… like…" he tried to look for a proper word, and came up with, "…like nothing! I feel almost _nothing at all_!"

Luna said nothing, just eyed him amusedly as he smacked a kiss against her scales and then whirled around again out of the joy of being free to do so. "Well," she said finally, after he had almost tripped on the hem of his robes several times and worked himself into sweat. "I'm happy for you, but I think you ought to stop before you give yourself a new injury."

"At this point I'd welcome it! Happily!" he assured breathlessly, stopping a bit to rest and gather energy for another burst of whirling. "It is hot here," he then muttered, and began opening the front buttons of his robes, glad that he had worn muggle clothing beneath, a habit he had never managed to get rid of despite all his years in the magical world. "Hey," he then said, noticing that behind them there was nothing. "The portal is gone."

"Yes," Luna agreed, glancing back. "I think it stayed open only for long enough to expel us, and then it collapsed. I only saw a glimpse of it."

"Ah. I got distracted – pity, I would've liked to see what it looked like from this side," Harry muttered, and quickly peeled his robes off with relief. While folding them and hanging them on the crook of his arm, he looked around again. "So," he said, trailing off. "We made it."

"Yes," the dragon said, snorting and glancing at him. "Which your little hysterics proved quite nicely."

"Stop calling me little, or I'll start calling you fat," Harry answered without much heat, and covered his eyes from the sunlight. Then he smiled as he took in the endless red and green scenery again, and the red, rocky mountain on top of which they were. He had a pretty good idea of where they were. "So. What do you think?" he asked, grinning again.

Luna said nothing for a moment, opening her wings wide, the sunlight shining through the thin membrane between the long spines, making the wings seem almost golden. "It's very nice," she said, closing her eyes for a moment and sighing happily under the warmth of the setting sun. "At least, as far as the scenery goes. This is Australia, I suppose?" she asked, with somewhat badly faked casualness.

"Either that, or in this reality there's life on Mars," Harry answered with a laugh. "Though who knows if this place is called Australia here. Seeing that this place doesn't have magic and that it _should_ have dragons, if the portal worked as well as it was supposed to, the place might be different enough for it to be called anything."

"You wished for Australia?" Luna asked, glancing at him.

"You wanted to go there," Harry said and shrugged. "Or New Zealand. I figured that Australia would be better for exploration, at least to start with, seeing as it's bigger." He glanced down at the robes on his arm and then turned to stuff them into the netting of Luna's harness before stepping forth a bit, to peer at the wide expanse of red and green land before him. A grin came to his face again. "This is _brilliant,_ " he said. "We're in _Australia_!"

"So we are," Luna answered, and nudged at his back fondly before stepping forward to look as well. Then, after a moment, she narrowed her pale blue eyes before suddenly standing up on her hind legs, spreading her wings for balance. "Hm. I think there are people over there – I can see a bit of light and smoke. A fire maybe."

"Excellent!" the man grinned happily, trying to see and just barely distinguishing the glimpse of light in the distance. "Shall we go say hi?"

"Do you think it's wise?" Luna asked, but not worriedly – sounding more thoughtful than concerned, really.

"I have no idea, but I didn't come here to be a coward," Harry answered, smiling up at her. "And it’s as good a way as any to see what this world is like. I mean, it could be inhabited by three-legged dinosaur descendants rather than humans, you know. And dragons, hopefully."

She snorted a bit at that. "Well, I suppose you're right," she said, and narrowed her eyes. "It's a bit far," she then said. "Climb aboard."

"If you don't mind," Harry said, glancing at the rigging on her. She was already loaded down by a ton or so of stuff. "Can you carry all of this stuff and me? I mean, we could probably leave some of it here safely."

"It isn't that heavy," she assured, and with a final glance at her face to make sure she really wasn't bothered, Harry took hold of the teal-coloured harness and climbed his way up to her back. It was much easier with the harness on, he mused as he settled himself into a crossing of leather straps, where he had a good hold at both sides and could hug one of her spine-horns if it came to that.

"Hold on," Luna said, taking a couple of quick steps and a then a long leap, spreading her wings wide as she did. She didn't flap them at all, but held them spread, gliding first slightly downwards and then arching just a bit to the right before catching some updraft and suddenly going upwards.

"Oh," she said, as they suddenly rose higher and higher on the rising air. Looking a bit surprised, she glanced back at her own wings, blinking. "Oh, so this is what it is like," she said. "There weren't thermals around Hogwarts, nothing like this anyway."

"And this is good?" Harry asked, his voice a little louder than usual as he glanced back and forth between the long, outstretched wings at her sides, and then back and behind where her long tail was level, moving only slightly as she glided on.

"Yes – it is so much easier to fly here. And it is so warm," Luna said, sounding happy as she turned to face ahead. "Ah, there," she then said, as she found the light of the campfire again, and angled towards it, her motions minimal but effective, aiming towards her goal with only the barest of efforts.

Harry leaned back a bit, his hands gripping the straps at his sides, and let himself marvel at the scenery below, the light of the setting sun, and Luna, who was so perfectly in her element. He hadn't really even considered wishing for anything else – Australia was as good a place to start as any – but if he’d had any worries, seeing her so at ease dispelled them entirely. And, he had to admit, she looked amazing; pure and pearly against the red and green of below, so bright in the light of the late evening. And the jewellery certainly didn't diminish the profile she cut.

The flight wasn't quite as exciting as some they’d had before. Above the forbidden forest, they had never dared to go far because the forest had its limit and she had been living there more or less in secrecy – even if it was something of an open secret. This sort of distance flying, rather than the limited aerial manoeuvring they had done so far, was new but not all that bad. It was almost relaxing, except for the dryness of the air gushing past him, that soon left Harry's eyes stinging a bit.

In the end, though, the flight turned out to be rather short; it took Luna only three wing beats and less than ten minutes to reach the campfire, and then she was forced to arc back because she overshot the site. As she circled above it, breaking through a thin column of smoke, Harry peered down, gripping the harness and reaching as far as he dared to see past her shoulder. There was a small group of people below, around the fire – or so it seemed anyway, as it was hard to see at this distance. What he did see was that the people, whoever they were, weren't overly shocked to see a dragon flying overhead – at least they didn't get up and run screaming for their lives.

Luna landed with an almost lazy beat of her wings to slow her descent, touching the ground gently not far from the fire. As she did, Harry kept his eyes on the fire, which had flickered and sputtered madly as she had kicked up some breath of wind with her descend; the people around the fire were humans, and they didn't look surprised or scared at all. No, in fact a few of them had left the camp site, and were coming forward.

"Oh," Luna murmured, eyeing the approaching men. They were dark skinned and mostly naked, wearing only loin cloths and some pieces of jewellery, one of them carrying a spear but seemingly in no hurry to put it to use. "Interesting. I think these must be aboriginals."

"I suppose so," Harry said, while easing his fingers from beneath the harness straps and then sliding down Luna's shoulder. He had no idea what he would do or say; there was every chance that these people couldn't understand English, which was nowadays the only language Harry knew; but since they had come this far, he figured they might as well make a good first impression.

"Hello," he said, in as friendly a voice as he could manage, while holding up a hand in a wave. "We come in peace?"

The men who had approached him eyed him in incomprehension, but didn't seem too insulted. They said something which was equally nonsensical to him as what he had said was to them, probably, and all Harry could do for a moment was blink. Seeming to realise that he couldn't understand them any more than they could understand him, the men exchanged a few words and one of them turned, went to the fire and brought back a bit of meat which they had been cooking on the fire.

"Ah, no, we're not hungry, thanks all the same," Harry answered, shaking his head, and glanced up at Luna. "Or are you?"

"Not really, no," Luna said. "Maybe we should introduce ourselves, and go from there?"

"Good idea," Harry nodded and turned to the aboriginal men, motioning at himself and saying his name before motioning at Luna and saying hers. Picking it up very quickly, the men nodded and then introduced themselves as "Kulata," the man with the spear, "Ananyi," a slightly elder male, and "Patjani," who was looking at Luna interestedly, his eyes resting on the golden rings on her horns and around her neck.

"Okay, that's something," Harry murmured, pressing the names to his memory. "Now what, though?"

Luna hummed, eyeing the men with equal curiosity. "Do you think we could ask them if there are other dragons here, since they're not surprised to see me?" she asked hopefully. "They don't seem too surprised to hear me talk, either."

"We can try," he decided, and then tried. Talking, though, he soon discovered was borderline useless venture, as the only words they shared were the names they had just exchanged, and in the end Harry tried with pantomime, motioning at Luna and trying to count numbers with his fingers and motion something like _others like her_ or so he thought. The men eyed him rather dubiously and offered verbal answers which made no sense.

In the end it was Luna who got the message across. After a while spent watching Harry trying to make himself understood, she stepped forward and began sketching pictures into the red sand with her talon: a dragon, then another, pointing at one of the dragons and herself, then the other one, making inquisitive sounds and pointing in different directions.

"Shen Li?" Patjani asked cautiously, exchanging looks with the others before Ananyi said something very lengthy and incomprehensible, before pointing away, towards the red sand stone mountain, saying something and then "Larrakia" several times.

"Okay, I think I got that. Dragons that way," Harry said, peering towards the rock mountain and figuring that the older aboriginal man probably meant beyond the mountain. Narrowing his eyes a bit, he considered it for a moment before turning to Luna. "Hold still for a bit, would you?" he asked, and then quickly wormed his way into the netting below her belly, crawling inside it until he reached one of the many, many satchels he had packed, and detaching the bindings holding it fastened. Coming out again and falling to the ground rather awkwardly, he sat the satchel to his lap and quickly dug through it, until he found the book he had been trying to find.

While Luna exchanged few more pictures in the sand with the men, asking who knew what, Harry leafed through the book, until he got to a picture dominating one entire page, with an article about the Uluru beside it. Holding the book up, he compared the picture with the rock and decided that they were probably one and the same – which meant they were about smack in the middle of Australia.

"I should've brought a compass," he muttered then, as he realised it didn't much help, knowing where they were, when he wasn't sure which was north; Ananyi might've been pointing any possible direction and he had no way of figuring which.

"What is that?" Luna asked, noticing the book.

"A travel guide," Harry said, grinning and closing the book to show the front to her, the word _Australia_ written on the front with large letters, with a colourful picture of the Sydney Opera House on the front, along with smaller pictures of sandy beaches and rocky mountains.

"A travel guide," she repeated, amused. "You brought _a travel guide_ to an alternate reality."

"The Unspeakables said that there was every possibility that the worlds would have the exact same geography, so I thought it could come in handy," Harry said with a shrug and showed the insides of the satchel. "I have one for every continent. Well, except for Antarctica, not much tourism there."

She snorted softly, nudging at him with the tip of her tail before turning to the men again. While Harry leafed through the book, wondering where they should go, and what time in history it was – if the worlds even had anything like the same history – Luna questioned the men a little more, finding out that they were of a tribe called Pitjantjatjara and that there was a dragon who came by every now and then to Uluru, which was why they weren't too surprised to see her; a dragon named Shen Li, apparently, who could also talk though they couldn't understand that dragon any more they could understand Luna and Harry.

"If this was modern times, there should be a road not too far from here," Harry murmured, the book open to a map of the area, following the line of the road. "And a town. Or a village," he added, his finger stopping on top of Yulara. Somehow he doubted it would be there, though, but it was worth looking at, if they couldn't think of anything else. There were also some other ridges not far from Uluru, called Kata Tjuta, but it didn't look like they were anything but rock.

"Oh, we could go to LakeAmadeus," Harry said, excited and looked up to Luna. "How long do you think it would take for you to fly thirty miles?"

"I don't know, I have never flown that far," Luna admitted, looking at him curiously. "LakeAmadeus?"

"It's a salt lake a bit north of here," Harry answered. "I've never seen a salt lake before. Or any lake, except for the BlackLake, actually."

The dragon blinked and considered it while the men of the Pitjantjatjara looked at them curiously. Then Luna let out a breath and frowned at him – or it seemed like she did, anyway, her face worked differently than a human's did. "It is a pretty good idea, to bring the guide along… but it's not much like exploring, like this," she said. "How is it discovering when you know exactly what's ahead, down to the location and name and all the distinctive features?"

"Well… I suppose it isn't," Harry said, taken aback a bit. "I'm... I just thought that it might be useful. Australia isn't the safest of places, you know, or so I figured anyway," he said, and closed the book. "We don't have to use it, of course."

She shook her head and then nudged at his shoulder. "It's good thinking, but how about we use it if we absolutely need to. I want to figure things out for ourselves, rather than use a guide. It's more fun, don't you think?"

"I suppose you're right about that," Harry admitted, and put the book into the satchel again, standing up and brushing the reddish sand from the back of his trousers.

They ended up spending the night with the Pitjantjatjara hunters, who didn't seem to mind sharing their fire with them, seeing that neither Luna nor Harry was hungry and thus didn't want them to share their food, though they did offer Harry some water and pointed where Luna might find some as well, if she liked to. Soon the men seemed to more or less forget their guests, though, and first they talked – and then suddenly started to sing – amongst themselves, with Harry and Luna being more observers than included in any of it.

"I wonder if we have to try and learn their language," Harry murmured, leaning against Luna's foreleg as she rested on her belly, watching the men sing, beating the rhythm with their hands. "I've never been good with languages."

"You spoke Parseltongue," Luna pointed out.

"I spoke it, but I didn't learn it," he said with a shrug. "And I can't anymore, not since Voldemort died. Are you any good with languages?"

"Some, I suppose. But I learned from books; here I suppose we would have to start from scratch, with no dictionaries to help," she murmured, and lowered her head. "At least they're friendly, and not bothered by me. That's… that's nice, isn't it?"

"It's pretty incredible, is what it is," he agreed, smiling and leaning his head back to look at her upside down. "And there are other dragons too, who can speak. Are you excited to meet some?"

"Not excited, maybe, but… interested," she said, and lowered her head to rest on the sand beside him. For a moment she said nothing, her blue eyes half lidded and thoughtful, before she glanced up at him. "You brought us to Australia," she then said. "Because of me."

"Well, me too. I've only ever been in Britain, and I'm definitely not against seeing new places," he answered, grinning and shifting to lean against her cheek, resting his chin against her scales. "Also, did you know that Australia produces over ninety percent of all of world's opals? And in the future, Australia is one of the biggest producers of gold. There were gold rushes, lots of them."

Luna snorted softly at him. "You're such a dragon," she said and then, with a twinkle in her eyes, added, "Maybe in this world it has all been mined, and there's none left."

"Crush all my dreams, why don't you?" he answered, even while sighing contently. "Not that I need any, mind you," he added. "But I wouldn't mind seeing opals. I've never seen an opal but I've heard that they're really pretty."

"Magpie dragon," Luna said with another snort and then hummed thoughtfully. "My breed is supposed to have opal-like eyes," she said then. "I don't, because I'm an animagus, but real Antipodean Opaleyes are named that for a reason – because their pupils are multicoloured, like opals. Maybe I should've tried harder, to make my eyes like a proper dragon's."

"I like your eyes just fine," Harry assured her, patting her cheek. "At a certain angle, they look like sapphires."

"From anyone else, that would be a very bad attempt of flattery," she muttered, chuckling. "Stop thinking about sparkly things."

"Well, at least I think they do. I've never seen a sapphire either," Harry admitted, ignoring her. "Do you think there are sapphires in Australia?"

She whacked him on the thigh with the tip of her tail, her eyes sparkling with laughter – and they looked enough like precious gemstones that Harry decided he probably didn't really need to see sapphires after all.

 

* * *

 

The next day, they parted company with the Pitjantjatjara, who, after having cleared their camp away, expressed that they needed to move on, keep hunting and take their catches to their people. Before that, Luna asked them again about other dragons and they again pointed towards Uluru, making throwing motions which Harry and Luna took to mean that they would have to fly pretty far. Then the men made to take their leave, taking only a moment to warn them about the water hole, about some predator that apparently hunted near it or something.

"Bunyip," they said grimly, making clawing or flytrap-like biting motions with their hands. Soon after, they were gone.

"I think that would be north," Luna said, peering towards Uluru and stretching, while Harry eyed her with dismay. During the night, the red sand had gotten all over her, and she was decisively less iridescent on the bottom now, with the sand clinging between her scales and dampening their usual glow.

"Alright, north it is then," Harry said, considering her hide and wondering if he had something to wipe her with. He probably did, since he and Mrs. Weasley had packed towels among many other things, but….

"What is it?" she asked, noticing his expression.

"This country is so bad on your hide," he answered mournfully, wiping a hand across her chest where it wasn't covered by the netting. "You're covered in dust. Didn't the Pitjantjatjara say that there is a waterhole nearby? Maybe I can wash you."

"I'd rather have a drink than a wash, and it's only sand," Luna said, amused, and stretched her wings. "I could use a bite to eat, too," she added then and looked around curiously. "I don't suppose there are acromantulas hereabouts."

"Well, there are other things. Kangaroos, emus, and whatnot," Harry said thoughtfully. They had some meat with them, packaged against the elements, but he hadn't really considered the problem of feeding a twenty ton dragon – or however much Luna weighed. In the forbidden forest she’d had a no doubt endless amount of gigantic spiders to eat, so it had never been a reason for serious concern. "If you can catch them, they might make a good meal for you."

"Hmm… well, I can try," she said, and stretched again.

"What was it like, to eat acromantulas?" he asked, curiously. "All hairy and spindly-legged and ugh…" He shuddered.

"Not really. If you eat them quickly enough, you don't notice the hair that much," she said thoughtfully. "And they were very crunchy; it was a bit like eating juicy chips, actually. A bit meatier maybe and slightly bitter, but not that bad."

Shuddering again, Harry climbed onto her shoulder, and she took wing, flying the short distance to the water hole. Luna drank quickly and deeply after which Harry did the same, washing his hands and face and then considering the water hole thoughtfully. "What do you suppose a bunyip is?" he asked, thinking about the warning the hunters had given about the place.

"I think it's some sort of monster; there was one in a story I read in my second year, I think," Luna mused, taking another swallow of the water. "It's probably better not to risk it; if there are dragons here, and they're commonplace, then it wouldn't be too strange for there to be monsters, too."

"Alright," Harry agreed and stretched his arms. "So, next we try and find you something to eat, and then start making our way north?" he asked.

"You should eat something too," Luna said, nudging at him.

"I can eat any time, if it comes to that. Mrs. Weasley forced me to pack half a year's worth of food, or so it seemed at the time anyway, so I'm not about to starve," Harry said, and ran a hand along the underside of her jaw. "You should let me wipe you a bit cleaner," he then said, a bit plaintively, when his hand came back wet and smeared with some of the red sand. "Just to get the worst of it off."

"I'll just get dirty again later, and besides, there isn't that much water here," she said, shaking her head with amusement before holding out her forehand for him to climb onto. "You can tidy me up later, if we encounter a bigger source of water. Now come on – I'm getting hungry."

Harry climbed onto her hand and let himself be lifted aboard – and soon after, she leapt aloft and with a few strong wing strokes she caught the thermal drifts.  After arching over the area once, she turned towards Uluru, and soon after flew over it as they started making their way north.

As Luna flew, seeming more comfortable on the wing than she had been even in the depths of the ForbiddenForest, Harry kept his eyes on the ground, reaching as far from the straps as he safely could and peering down. There were no roads below, and they flew over no towns or villages; in fact, as far as he could see there were no signs of human settlements whatsoever. But then, he hadn't really expected there to be any.

When he and Luna had, after lengthy ceremonies that could've been summarised simply with _goodbye and have a good life_ , stepped through the portal, his wish for the other world had been as clear as he could make it under the circumstances. A world without magic, but with dragons like Luna so that her existence wouldn't stand out, a world not completely explored or conquered but still wild and free and strange here and there; a world before everything was made _modern_ and _alike_. And of course, he wished for Australia specifically, since Luna wanted it and it seemed interesting enough.

If he was at all correct in his assumptions, he had gotten pretty much all of his wishes, and Australia probably hadn't yet been conquered by western civilisation and maybe it never would be here. It was an odd and alluring thought all at once and, yeah, Luna had been right. It was much better to go at things without the travel guide – unless, of course, they got lost or really needed to find some place. Like a nice opal or gold vein.

So, he didn't expect to see any human settlements below. What he saw was enough to keep his attention, though. More of the sandstone mountains in the distance, and an endless amount of the sandy red expanse, with its tufts of greenery here and there.  One couldn't call it a particularly exciting sight to see, but it was still very new and very strange to Harry, more used to the modern cities of the muggle world and the thick forests of Hogwarts; such _deserts_ were completely novel to him.

"I see something," Luna said after an hour or so of leisurely flying, peering downwards intently. "There, moving. I think it might be a flock of land birds; they look big."

"Do you want to try having a go at them?" Harry asked curiously, trying to peer down as well. As good as his glasses were, they apparently weren't good enough; he couldn't see anything but more of the same as before.

"I definitely do. Should I put you down somewhere first?" Luna asked, turning her head to look at him considering. "I haven't tried hunting from aloft before – it might be rough."

Harry considered his own position on her shoulder and his grip on her harness. His fingers were already getting a bit tired. "Give me a moment; I should have some rope in the net, I'll tie myself on," he said, and carefully began climbing his way down along the harness – a difficult and not a bit dangerous process, with her wings flapping to keep her aloft, the powerful muscles working right beneath his hands and feet.

"Can you do it; should I land?" Luna asked anxiously.

"I can manage it, don't worry," Harry answered, sliding his way down carefully, a process made difficult by the fact that no matter how well the harness had been made, they hadn't considered this sort of situation while making it, so there were few footholds for him to use.

"Should probably get rid of my shoes," he murmured under his breath, while easing his ankle around one strap and sliding down along it. But in the end he was a Quidditch player and used to hanging onto flimsy things for dear life, and as difficult as it was, he managed to make his way down, sliding into the netting – and finding himself oddly snug there, just below her chest, lying on his back on the netting as if in an enormous hammock. Granted, a hammock filled nearly to the brim with stuff, but still.

"Harry, are you alright?" Luna asked, peering down and at him, sounding worried.

"Actually, I’m pretty comfortable – I could _live_ here," he answered with a laugh. "Never mind the rope; I can stay here, safe and snug. Have at the birds, Luna."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," he said, grinning. Luna nudged at the netting with the knuckles of her forehand consideringly and then nodded, turning her attention to the birds.

It was rather like being on the bottom of an enormous rollercoaster, as Luna dived down, made her first attempt at her prey, and angled up again, swift and incredibly fast. Harry, lying on his stomach on the netting and looking through it eagerly, nearly lost his eyeglasses in the mad rush of air along her stomach, and would've more than fallen off if he had still been on her back; he doubted that the rope would've been enough to secure him, if he had gone with it instead. He didn't much worry about it; the experience was incredible, exhilarating, as the earth tilted and came up at him and then went away again, all in one rushing motion that put the carts of Gringotts to shame.

Luna didn't manage to catch anything that pass, and her second and third were even worse off; the birds had an odd way of running away and suddenly changing their direction completely so that she, despite her size and reach, shot clean past them. But by the fourth dive, she had gotten a better hang of the technique, and in that pass caught one of the large birds in her talons.

"Oh, brilliant! Well done!" Harry yelled at her excitedly.

"Hmm," she hummed, circling over the ground while looking at her catch; the bird was stone dead with a broken neck, and it didn't look all that big in her hand. "They're smaller than I thought. One of these won't be enough."

"Then catch some more; there seems to be plenty," Harry said, and she did, dropping the dead bird during her fifth pass and catching another one, dropping that one as well to be caught once she had enough of them collected.

Overall, she caught some eight birds of the flock of two dozen or so, dropping to the ground after her final catch and adding the two she had caught in her last pass into the pile. A bit winded and his head still spinning, Harry crawled out of the netting and more or less fell to the red-tinged ground, laughing breathlessly with exhilaration.

"Are you alright?" Luna asked worriedly, nudging at him with her snout.

"Fine, fine. That was amazing," he said, laughing and patting her scales, and then looking at her catch. It was an impressive pile, though one of the passes had made his stomach turn a bit; Luna had skewered one of the birds with her talon, and the smell of blood and raw flesh was strong even in the mad rush of wind, and to his unaccustomed nose.

"Very impressive," Harry said, ignoring his stomach and sitting up with a stretch.

Luna hummed in answer, and thoughtfully reached to take one of the dead birds into her jaw – barely enough to be a mouthful for her – and swallowed it. She ended up coughing and retching oddly, a very strange thing for a dragon to do, and though she got the bird down it wasn't without some grimacing and awkwardness.

"Ugh," she said, shuddering once the bird was done. "Too many feathers; it felt like swallowing a feather duster."

"Maybe if you bit down before trying to swallow? Or we could drop them in a water hole for a moment, if we happen to finds one nearby," Harry suggested, and she eyed the bird rather dubiously.

"Couldn't you pick the feathers off?" she asked hopefully, making him chuckle.

"I can try, but I've never done anything like that before, and those are pretty damn big. It might take a while," he said, but pulled up his sleeves.

It was difficult. The feathers were attached pretty tightly and he couldn't figure out which way it was easier to pull them off. In the end he gave up and marched over to her, to dig through the bags and satchels in the netting until he found the ones holding the cooking utensils and then, armed with a nice firm knife, he tried again. He gave up on picking the feathers – but skinning was something he did know how to do, from Care of Magical Creatures and Potions classes.

It was messy, awkward work, though, and he got himself bloody, and the birds dusty and sandy on the ground. Without their coats of thick, brown feathers, the birds weren't that big, but they were still too heavy for him to lift, and so he was forced to roll them about to get the skins off. Luna didn't distain the dirt, though, taking the first bird before Harry was even completely finished; all she wanted was to get most of the feathers off so that the thing wouldn't catch in her throat in that awkward, dry way the first had.

"I think I'm getting the hang of this," Harry muttered, after his second and third bird, but he turned to the fourth one with slight dismay – his arms were getting tired, not used to this sort of work, and he was drenched in sweat – the sun had risen higher and higher as he worked, and was almost directly above them now, and so, _so_ hot. Wiping a bloody arm across his forehead he looked up to Luna. "Might if I take a break?"

"Of course," she said. "You don't need to exhaust yourself, I can wait."

"Just want to catch my breath and rest a bit, before my hands start to shake," he shrugged, cleaning the knife on one of the slightly bloody discarded skins, which had started to attract flies, and leaving it on top of the rest of the birds, before taking a walk around the area.

All the other birds had flown madly, and there were no living creatures apart from them to be seen; but there were tracks, rather a lot of tracks. Curiously Harry examined them, following them to the shade of the stubby but rather energetic trees and bushes that grew insistently in the otherwise dry area. As he did, taking in the three toed footprints, he wondered how many of the birds there were in the flock they had just decreased by eight – and how many of them there were in the entire place? How often did Luna need to eat?

Then he saw the large nest, half hidden underneath a bush; with several oddly long eggs, nine in total, all green in colour and looking more like some sort of vegetable than eggs.

"Hey, I found a nest," he said, calling back to Luna who left her catch to peer curiously at the nest.

"I suppose I might've killed their parents," Luna said, but without much guilt as she leaned down and eyed the eggs. "They're too small to be of any use to me, though. Maybe you can eat them. You have something to cook them with, right?"

"I was packed with all the things in a proper kitchen, except for the walls, floor and ceiling," Harry said with a snort and took one of the hard, surprisingly cool eggs. It was surprisingly heavy and longer than his hand was from tips of his fingers to this wrist. "Just one of these would make a huge omelette, though," he murmured, "I suppose there's no use wasting them, though," he said, hefting the egg a bit.

He packed the eggs away in one of the satchels, filling it first with some feathers to make sure that the eggs wouldn't jostle, and then packing them tightly. That was when Luna found another nest not far from the first one – and then a third – after which Harry had to get another satchel, the first one having filled to the brim. In the end he had thirty two of the eggs, and very little notion of what to do with all of them; there was no way he could eat them all before they'd spoil.

But his childhood with Dursleys had taught him to never waste food, and so he wouldn't. And if he couldn't eat them all, then Luna could easily have the rest, even if they were too small to make much of a difference to her.

After he had stowed the eggs away, he finished skinning the birds for Luna, and then watching as she ate them all, heads and feet and all, swallowing the first few whole, and then studiously biting through one, and crunching the rest with a thoughtful expression. "It's nothing like eating acromantulas, but it's not bad. Much more juicy," she said, licking her teeth, which had gotten red with blood.

"Did you have enough?" Harry asked while trying to clean his hands a bit of the blood. Though it was irritating – the blood dried fast and then started itching as it flaked off – he was inching to get a towel and wipe Luna's muzzle clean more than he wanted to clean himself. The smears of red did not at all look good against the pearly hide.

"Yes, I'm full. Shall we continue?" she asked, stretching out her wings, and they did.

The air got mercilessly hot as the day progressed; even the air rushing past them as they flew didn't help much, as it was just as hot as it was at ground level. Luna though didn't seem at all bothered, her wings spread wide to catch the uplifts of the thermals and soaring away, easy as anything. "Aren't you hot at all?" Harry complained after some time, sweating despite having unbuttoned his shirt nearly completely.

"I am warm, but it's not bad at all," she said, sounding almost contented as she turned her head to look at him, her flight never faltering. "I suppose my kind is made for weather and terrain like this; I was always a bit cold in the ForbiddenForest, but I'm not at all here. It's easier to breathe too."

Harry eyed her jealously and sighed. "Would you mind if I went down into the netting?" he asked, peering past her shoulder and thinking longingly of the hammock like enclosure just beneath her chest – in her large shadow. "I think I'm going to have sunburns if I stay up here any longer."

"If you want to, sure, I don't mind," she assured him, and he quickly made his way downto the minutely cooler spot in the netting, sighing with relief once he was out of the scorching sun. It was much more comfortable too, to lie in the netting than to try and find a spot to sit on her ever shifting back; he felt less likely to fall off any moment, though it would probably take some time to get used to the shifting of the netting.

In the netting, he had his first bite to eat in the new world, digging out a bottle of water and some pastries someone, he had lost track of who, had pressed on him when he had been packing. So many people had contributed to the packing: Mrs. Wealsey, Hermione, Ginny, Kreacher, half of the staff of Hogwarts with Madam Pomfrey not relenting until he had agreed to bring her two heavy chests along despite how they weighed, Hagrid and Charlie and Kingsley's people….

"Well, at least we're not likely to run out anytime soon," he mused, lying on his back and yawning once the food was gone and the water secured away. There, with the net swaying ever so slightly as Luna flew, he fell into a doze.

 

* * *

 

Their trip up north became proper exploration by the third day, the days having been spent aloft and the nights near whatever source of water they could find – but not too near because of the bunyips, whatever they were. Luna had on those days covered more space than Harry knew how to count, and hunted not only emus but also kangaroos, which they had encountered the second day; though that time Luna had only caught one and that only for curiosity's sake, having not been so hungry that time.

The third day was when they lost their way, stopped going north, and started going who knew where. It was in the evening that Harry noticed that the sun was on the wrong side, and that they were going east. It didn't make much difference as far as the flying had gone; the scenery stayed more or less the same, dry and mostly red with occasional growths here and there.

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter which way we go, it's unknown all the same," Harry mused, peering around while they flew, Luna correcting her aim and making for the north once more.

"I suppose," Luna agreed and glanced over her shoulder at him. "How is it that you pack half a house but not a compass?"

"I've never needed one; I've never even _had_ one," Harry said defensively. "And in my defence, Hermione helped me pack, and _she_ didn't think of it either. So it's not just my fault."

She snorted in amusement and turned to peer ahead. "I see some people over there," she said then, lifting her head a bit. "I think there might be a village or something there."

Harry craned his neck to try and see, but it was impossible – her eyes were far better than his. "Let's try if they might know which way we ought to go, to get to the Larrakia."

What Luna saw wasn't a village, but some sort of temporary but fairly large camp of not quite _tents_ , but sort of shelters made from wood and leaves, some with skins thrown over them for extra cover. The people, like the hunters Harry and Luna had met, were dark skinned and mostly naked; the women and men alike only had a loincloth, if even that, and they were all barefoot. Like the hunters, they didn't seem too alarmed by Luna, and as she descended, few of them came forth curiously; an old man with greying hair and beard and a cheerful expression leading them. They all of them exclaimed over Luna, gazing at her pearly scales in open admiration.

"Hello," Harry said with equally cheerful tone as he dropped to the ground, before introducing himself and Luna in awkward pantomime, which then soon turned into an exchange of scribbling on the dry earth as they made their attempt to ask which way to go.

These people weren't from the same tribe as the Pitjantjatjara, but another one called Iliaura or Yalyuwara, or something like that; they pronounced the name oddly and Harry couldn't repeat it quite right. They knew of the Pitjantjatjara though, and of the Larrakia, and in the midst of giving Luna curious looks, admiring her jewellery and rigging openly, they were happy enough to give them directions. North by west this time, rather than straight north.

After they had given their directions, the tribesmen tried to offer Harry and Luna a trade, one of them motioning rather longingly at Luna's wrists and another having come closer to examine one of the _many_ rings around the bases of her short, talon adorned fingers. They had gotten a bit bloody as she had hunted, and dirty with the red sand and dust, but the gleam of gold was still very much visible, and alluring.

"No, I'm sorry but they're all Harry's," Luna said to the men, shaking her head. "And he's too much of a magpie to part with any."

"Well, if I needed something really badly, I might be willing – but we have pretty much everything we need, right now," Harry answered, and then shook his head to the Iliaura. Thankfully the men took the negative answer rather well and backed away easily with no hard feelings present. With the trade thus declined and the directions received, the topics of conversation were more or less exhausted. So Harry bowed to the men awkwardly, thanking them even though they couldn't understand the words, before climbing back onto Luna's shoulders.

They were back on the wing, and making their way soon after, and as they flew, Harry snacking on a pastry as they went, he wondered how many tribes there were in the place, considering bringing out the guide again and deciding against it. At least the people seemed amiable and weren't shy about dragons, so that was good.

"I think the Iliaura spoke a different language than the Pitjantjatjara," Luna mused after a while. "They pronounced some things differently."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, leaning back a bit and peering at the sky. The sun was, yet again, merciless. "I think they all probably have different languages. It's a big place."

"It will be difficult, if we ever have to communicate with them for more than some directions and guidance," she said thoughtfully. "Not that it would've been easy if they all had the same language, except now we might have to try and learn several."

"Do we really have to?" he asked, a bit dismayed.

"Well, maybe not right now. But if we're going to stay here…."

Harry sighed. He had never been a particularly good study, except if the material was really interesting. And the only material that had ever been interesting was Defence Against the Dark Arts, something which was no use to him what-so-ever, anymore. "Well, I hope you're good with languages," he said, swallowing the last of his pastry. "Because I probably won't be any help."

"We'll see," she said, and they flew on.

As the hours went by, and turned into days, Harry got used to the place – more or less. The heat still forced him down from Luna's back shortly before midday and to the relatively easier spot at her belly, and he got his first sunburn in years just a week into their lives in the new world. He had been packed with plenty of lotions and medicine, as well as some potions which had all spoiled somehow – the lack of magic, Luna supposed at the sight of their murky, black states – but what he had not packed was sunscreen.

"And here I thought I had packed well," he muttered, after resigning himself to the use of aloe vera instead, which was good for the burns, but not for their prevention.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Luna said somewhat amusedly.

"No. Just redder," Harry muttered, before digging through all the boxes and satchels of clothing, until he found the thinnest and lightest robe he had – which had a hood. It was white and absolutely intolerable to wear, but wear it he did, keeping the hood on despite how it made him sweat.

And so they continued. Luna hunted kangaroos and emus and cassowaries and whatever else she saw from aloft; and Harry skinned most of them for her, after she got used to the lack of feathers she also decided that kangaroo was much better without skin. He didn't mind the work, seeing that she was doing most of the work most of the day otherwise, carrying him and all their things. So long as he had water to wash himself with afterwards, though.

He almost completely forgot everything about the emu eggs, except for every now and then to consider trying to cook them, only to decide against it because it was always so damned hot that he just didn't want to try and make a fire. He rather ate the pastries and bread and whatever else he had been packed with which couldn't last for long; he had found a box of sandwiches in one of the trunks, which had spoiled in the heat and had to be thrown away. It seemed like everyone who had helped him pack had separately decided to add a bit of food in; and wizards, sadly, didn't store food well. Potion ingredients, yes, but not food. Harry had a whole box full of greens, which were all bound to rot very soon.

The best sort of food Harry had was all from Hermione, who had packed him with things like flour, seeds, dry crackers, some hundred or so cans varying from tuna to beef to a variety of soups to more beans. She had also packed several dozen bags of the sort of muggle dry foods that one just poured into a pot full of water, and boiled for a while to get anything from pasta to a variety of soups and so on.

So, really, he didn't need the eggs all that much and thus didn't think of them much, either, after storing them in the belly netting and making sure that they wouldn't fall. At least not until one of the bags started making noises.

"Well," he said, after they had landed to investigate and he had pulled out cracked egg shells and a rather large baby emu, its fluffy body striped dark and white and gaping, its mouth desperately open. "Well," he said again, not sure what else to say.

"I suppose expecting them to be fresh eggs was a bit too much," Luna said, leaning down and peering at the baby chick, already some ten inches in length. "What are we going to do with it?"

Harry shifted awkwardly, not sure. Kill it? It was all right to watch Luna kill and then to skin the adult emus; they were food at that point, and a necessity, so he didn't feel too guilty about them. But this was a baby bird and killing it would be only that - and would have no other purpose other than to getting rid of it. Nor could he think of leaving the poor thing behind – it would starve to death.

"I suppose it would be difficult to keep it while we're flying. And the other eggs might hatch too," he muttered, a bit uneasy.

"It's pretty small, still," Luna said thoughtfully. "Do you think it would fit into one of the trunks, if you emptied it and put the stuff in it to other trunks?"

"You think we should keep it?" Harry asked, surprised.

"I might be a dragon, but I'm not heartless," she snorted, nudging at him admonishingly. "And it's pretty cute, even if it's almost too small for me to see it properly. I say we keep it for now, if we can, and maybe release it once it's bigger. What do you suppose they eat?"

"I have no idea, but I have enough foodstuffs with me that I can try," Harry said, lifting the little emu chick and eyeing it considering. It was a gangly little thing and might very well fit into a trunk. How _long_ it would fit in one though, he didn't know. And on top of that, they had some thirty more eggs, and if they were all to hatch… "Well. I suppose there's nothing else to do but try."

He emptied one of the larger trunks, which held some bedding like thick blankets, pillows, even a _mattress_ , and into which the baby chick fit very nicely, with room to roam and to even stand in. After covering the floor of the trunk with some dry grass gathered from around them, he wrapped the bedding and the mattress in one of the larger duvets, wrapping the thusly made packet in rope. The whole packet would probably get all dusty and dirty as they travelled, but he didn't mind much; he hadn't needed any of them so far, sleeping most nights on Luna's back without as much as a pillow.

"There," he said, once he was done. "I wonder how the chick will handle the travel, though. I should probably cut some holes into the trunk, just in case."

"Probably," Luna agreed, while curiously sniffing the little bird.

Harry cut the holes, and then deposited the chick in its new home, which he then tied tightly to the netting, hoping that it wouldn't jostle too much. Well, he had stuffed the thing with as much grass and hay as he could manage, hopefully that would protect the bird enough. "Now. Let's see about that food."

The little bird didn't eat anything he offered it, though it eyed some of the greens and seeds with some interest. In the end, Harry packed those into a separate bag to be kept at the side of the trunk, and offered the bird some water, which it distained too. "Well, I can't force feed it," he muttered after having tried everything. "It will eat once it's hungry, or not, and that's it."

"Alright, if you say so," Luna said, peering down awkwardly in a sort upside down manner, which was the only way she could see into the netting. "Shall we get going then? There's still some of the day left."

 

* * *

 

That day, another of the emu chicks hatched – the next day, three more. Thankfully, the first one started eating, accepting some seeds first from Harry's hand and then from a cup, after Harry had nearly gained bitten fingers and a badly cut palm for his troubles. The chick also started drinking, which Harry took as a good sign, and if any of the birds thought badly of their confinement or the flying, they didn't much express it.

Still, whenever they landed, Harry released them from their confinement. They all got to their feet not much after hatching, and were all running by that time, dashing away and then back to Harry's side in Luna's shadow, before doing it again, back and forth. Watching them with bewildered amusement, Harry waited until Luna had drunk her fill from the latest water hole, before drinking some himself and taking a moment to wash away that day's sweat.

"It will be _very_ awkward if they keep hatching at this rate," he mused, as he watched the five chicks flutter about. "There isn't that much space in that trunk, and I can't empty them all. How long do you think it will be before we reach Larrakia? Maybe I can give the chicks to them."

"I have no idea," Luna admitted, very cautiously setting down after making sure there were no chicks beneath her. "We'll manage somehow and if not, we can start making our way on foot."

Harry threw her a surprised glance and then looked away a bit guiltily. He had started to take her flying for granted, as it was so convenient. "I suppose we could, but it's bound to take much longer than flying," he said, following one of the chicks with his eyes as it stumbled about towards the water, its speed coming in little bursts as if it was trying to run and walk all at once.

There was a rustle from a nearby bush, a flash of a huge maw, and then the little bird was gone as if it had never been there.

Harry stared, uncomprehending. Confused, he glanced at the other chicks – four of them now – and then back to the spot where the fifth chick had been. "Luna?" he asked uncertainly, while slowly standing up and, for the first time in a long time, wishing he had his wand and could still use it. "Did you see that?"

"Did I see what?" Luna asked, lifting her head from her contemplation of the other chicks. "What is it?"

"There was a… uh…" Harry frowned, pointing where the bird had been just a moment ago, not sure how to put it. "One of the chicks was just there, and then… it wasn't. I think something just snatched it, just there, by the water. I didn't see it that well, it was just a moment, but it had a very big mouth."

Luna turned her eyes keenly to the water hole, but nothing moved, not even the bushes which had rustled just a moment ago. She stood up as well, and walked carefully past the other chicks and to the water. "There's nothing here," she said, nosing at the water line and then at the bushes.

"Well, one of the chicks is definitely gone," Harry said, while ushering the remaining chicks safely away, keeping them away and close – which, thanks to the fact that they all probably thought he was their mother, wasn't that difficult.

"Hmm," Luna hummed, and then, more by accident than intention, pulled one of the bushes off. It lifted whole, coming free with a patch of hard packed earth. "Oh. There's a hole there," she said, peering inside while Harry watched from the side, not all that eager to get close to something with so big a mouth. "It looks rather recent. Maybe whatever it was that you saw uses it?" she added, reaching with her forehand and testing the sides.

"Maybe. It was really fast whatever it was, and I barely heard a thing," Harry said, frowning and thinking. "You think that was the bunyip?"

"Hmm," Luna hummed, and dropped the patch of earth with its bush covering back to its place. "Maybe. The Pitjantjatjara did say that it hunts around water holes, I think. And if you saw a maw, that supports their testimony."

"Yeah," Harry murmured, and dropped to a crouch, his arms protectively around the four chicks, who whistled and chirped confusedly. "Do you think we ought to stay here? Not that I think the bunyip will do anything to you or probably to me either, but the birds…."

Luna considered it, and then came back. "Yes, you're right. I've drunk my fill and you have water enough to spare; we might as well sleep somewhere else," she said, and gratefully Harry ushered the chicks back into their trunk, and they took wing again. That night they slept on a rocky clearing with no water in sight, Harry and the emu chicks all protected at Luna's side.

After that, they didn't sleep near the water holes, and every time Harry went near water, Luna hovered about him, often times going as far as to practically stand over him like a living, moving pavilion.  And though their number of chicks went up from four to eight and then to eleven, Harry kept them as much in the trunk as he could, and only when they made camp for the night did he let them out, rather than during all the small breaks they took whenever they encountered water.

The situation with the chicks was becoming near desperate, though. The trunk was definitely getting crowded as the birds grew not only in number but in body as well, growing slowly but steadily bigger, until the older ones were twice as big as the younger ones. There was food aplenty, thank god, and they all ate healthily, but the space situation was worrying Harry more than a little, and he was contemplating on emptying another trunk, or maybe trying something else, maybe making some sort of larger box for them from whatever wood they could find around the desert – he should have nails and a hammer _somewhere_ ….

He didn't yet, though, because after the hatching of the first twelve or so chicks, there were several days when no more hatched and while they still fit somewhat comfortably into the one trunk, he let things be as they stood. By the time the thirteenth egg hatched, the ground below had started looking more green than red and – just as Harry started contemplating the trunks, thinking about which one of them he ought to empty – they reached the coast.

 

* * *

 

For one day and night, Harry and Luna stayed with their chicks on one wide beach with sand as far as the eye could see, and pleasant, warm water wafting up and down the shore. While the emu chicks frolicked about the sand in delight and confusion, Harry determinately stripped Luna of all her gear, rigging and even took off the jewellery before pointing her to the lagoon.

"You're covered in dust," he said, while digging out a brush in one of the bags holding a variety of hygiene products. "Not to mention about blood and other things – I _am_ going to clean you up."

"You need to straighten your priorities, Harry," she laughed, but made her way into the water, having to wade quite far before it was deep enough for her to do more than stand. She splashed about for some time, making sure to get water all over herself while Harry took a moment to bathe as well as soak some of his dirtier clothing. Then he wrapped a towel around his hips as a sort of makeshift loincloth and attacked Luna's sides and belly with the brush.

Sadly, the sand and dust were very persistent, and the wear and tear of travel had ruined some of the polish of her scales, turning their surface rough and dry; worse yet, the edges of her wing membranes were cracked with dehydration and had grown tattered and torn. "Why didn't you tell me?" Harry complained when he discovered the abused folds of skin. "I have lotion for these sorts of things!" Or at least he supposed he did, since he certainly had several sorts of lotions, and if nothing else worked, he could apply the same aloe vera he used on his sunburns.

"It didn't seem all that important," Luna said, while drying in the air. Grumbling to himself about her being so indifferent to her own appearance, Harry set about applying the lotion to the dried folds, gently rubbing them until they were soft and supple and hopefully recovering.

Once he was satisfied – or as satisfied as he was about to get, since he was sorely tempted to try and lotion her scales too and see if it would recover them from the abuse of weather and sun – he spent some time polishing the jewellery that had gotten similarly dried, stained, and abused. The rings that had been around her fingers were the worst case, caked with dried blood and dust and who knew what else; they took a long soak in soapy fresh water and plenty of brushing to clean.

"That's what you get, adorning a dragon with shiny things," Luna said amusedly as he grumbled over his task. "I did tell you that the rings at least were a bad idea."

"I am not listening to you," Harry harrumphed. Once he was done cleaning the jewellery, however, he returned most of it to her, adorning her horns with their multitude of rings, as well as her neck, but not her forehands. That jewellery went into the chest with the other pieces he had for her, but which put together were entirely too much for her to wear all the time.

"Oh, brighten up," Luna laughed, while the emu chicks flocked about them, a few of them climbing on Luna's hind leg, as familiar with her as they were with him and each other. "At least I didn't _lose_ any of them. It might've happened during the long flight, you know."

"You just had to go and say that," Harry said with disgust. "I bet thanks to you the next time we go aloft, they will all fall – and the trunk holding the rest of them too – and everything will be ruined."

She snorted, nudging his bare back with her snout. "Put some clothing on, you idiot, before you get a worse sunburn."

Grumbling some more, he did just that, before setting about re-harnessing her as well, now that she was dry again.

They might've stayed longer in the bay than that one day and the following night, as it was rather comfortable and nice, and there seemed to be no bunyips about; and Luna said she could see some sort of large fish breaching the surface in the distance, which she might wish to try. But they decided against it when, the following morning, they were greeted by the sight of several aboriginal women, coming towards them along the beach; aboriginals who, after staring somewhat confusedly at Harry's and Luna's growing crowd of emu chicks and exclaiming over Luna's pearly colouring, introduced themselves as the Larrakia.

"Shen Li?" one of them asked, brightening when Harry and Luna pantomimed and sketched out their question and desire to see other dragons. The following speech was all too foreign for them to make any sense off, but they all pointed towards the north, only this time without any excessive throwing motions, which Harry and Luna took to mean that they were getting closer.

After some awkward attempts of explanation and questioning – the women, who seemed to be there to gather sea shells or something like that, were very curious about the tame emu chicks – the aboriginals withdrew for a moment, talking amongst themselves for a while. Then one of them stepped forward and offered to show them the way, or so Harry thought anyway. She might've been offering to sell her brother to them for all he could understand her. The woman, about ten years older than Harry and almost completely naked, made about climbing to Luna's harness, making delighted exclamations about the jewellery and looking to settle herself there, so he figured that it was the former she meant, rather than the latter.

"Do you mind another passenger?" Harry asked Luna, while whistling to the emu chicks to get them all together; they had gotten so used to the whole thing, that they didn't mind it too much when he went about lifting them into the trunk.

"Not at all, if she can point us the right way," Luna answered, looking at the woman curiously. "What's her name, though?"

The woman's name was Arnurna, and she made a decent enough passenger, as awkward as it was to have her about, naked and completely unselfconscious; but then again, Harry could definitely see the point in it, since it was so damned hot all the time. If he hadn't burned so easily, he probably would've been running about in only a loincloth too. Arnurna seemed to have some experience with flying on dragons, for she held on very tightly, and knew to brace herself against the wind in the way that had taken Harry a few days to figure out.

Arnurna, though unable to communicate further than by pointing, made a good enough guide. Under her guidance, Harry, Luna and their emu chicks crossed over a stretch of green, lively land, following the coastline for the most part until they, after an hour or so of flying, came to another wide beach, and another nice, peaceful bay.

This bay, however, was adorned with a few huts and what looked to be a construction site of something much larger. And, Harry realised as he stared down at the bay in fascination, there were also a few ships on the water, ships larger than he would've expected of the aboriginals.

"Harry?" Luna asked as she glided over the bay, staring it as keenly as he. "Those people over there; they're not aboriginals. Their skin is pale and they're wearing more clothing."

"Westerners?" Harry asked thoughtfully, while Arnurna pointed at the sand, making landing motions.

"I'm not sure. They might be," she said.

"Let's find out," Harry said, and with a nod she made to land.

The paler men weren't western but eastern: Chinese, to be precise. They approached Harry and Luna with curious cautiousness, looking between Arnurna who went about explaining, Luna, and Harry who felt a bit shabby in his rather ragged white robe – more pink now, really, thanks to all the dust during the travel – next to their colourful silk garments. They seemed more cautious of Luna than the aboriginals had been so far, a few of them contemplating her scales with narrow eyes, like trying to figure something out.

"Oh, pity," Luna murmured, as the Chinese started speaking amongst themselves, glancing at Harry and Luna and frowning thoughtfully. "They speak Cantonese; I know a bit of Mandarin, but not Cantonese."

"Is there a difference?" Harry asked.

"Of course there is a difference," she answered with a sort of indulgent glance Ravenclaws were known to give their more ignorant school mates, like Gryffindors. "But I suppose I can still try," she then said, and after clearing her throat, she said something in halting Chinese, completely unintelligible to Harry, but which made the Chinese men pause. What resulted was a halting conversation between Luna and the man, with awkward pauses and moments of confusion which gave Harry the impression that Luna might not be all that fluent in the language.

"Harry," she said after a moment. "What colour would you say I am?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked confusedly.

She shrugged her wings slightly. "I'm not sure. Would you say I'm white?"

"No, not really. You're pearly, though I suppose some might argue that a pearl is white, but…" he trailed away. "You've always been all pearl to me."

She nodded, and talked a bit more with the Chinese, growing slightly steadier the more they spoke. The Chinese men seemed to relax a bit, and after a while they stopped looking so worried. They eventually even motioned Harry and Luna to follow them towards the huts and the building site.

"It seems that they're building a port here, for trade," Luna said. "There is only one other dragon who is seen in Australia at all, and that's Shen Li, who's apparently a Chinese dragon; she flies routes between China, this port, and some points around Australia, ferrying people and goods. Aside from her and me, there are no other dragons here at all. Just the bunyips."

"Aw, that's a pity," Harry said, as they followed the Chinese men towards the buildings. "Did you catch the names of these people?"

"Huang Wen, Chiang Zhi and Hao Qiu; and then there is Jia Zhen, who is chief of the outpost here and in charge of building it and managing the trade here," Luna said. "The others are workers and servants of his, mostly; there are a few other Chinese here, it seems, but most of the people here are the Larrakia, or at least I think that's what they said. These are all Larrakia lands, it seems."

She seemed to have gotten the right gist of it; once they got to the settlement, there were indeed more Larrakia members there than Chinese. The big building site seemed to be the beginnings of a pavilion, which seemed to be meant for dragons; the offices of Jia Zhen would be built attached to the pavilion.

Harry wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting, but this wasn't quite it. A Chinese port in Australia, he could handle that, but he didn't know what he and Luna were supposed to do with it. They had only been interested in seeing other dragons, and to find themselves guests in midst of a growing harbour was… Well, it wasn't bad, so there was that. And once the initial wariness – which for some reason seemed to have been caused by Luna's colouring of all things – had passed, they were welcomed rather eagerly, and the Chinese spoke to Luna with growing respect and warmth, as they took her in more fully and took visible notice of her  jewellery.

When one of the men, Huang Wen, asked something and Luna answered, nodding towards Harry, he found himself soon included in those respectful glances. "I told them all my jewellery is actually yours, but you like it more when I wear it," Luna explained. "They're asking me where we're from, though. What should I answer?"

"I have no idea. Tell them we're adventures: explorers, thrill seekers, something," he said. Then, hearing whistling and peeping coming from Luna's netting, he added, "Oh, and ask them if there might be a fence anywhere in here, where we could put the birds?"

There wasn't any, and the question was received with some curious confusion. That was when Jia Zhen came to join them, hurrying down from the building site in a flurry of silken robes to receive them. He was probably about thirty years old, and obviously busy; his face was a bit red and his breath short and he obviously hadn't been expecting visitors such as them.

Luna and the man spoke for a moment, the man blinking at her with mounting confusion and incredulity before turning to one of the other Chinese men and ordering something rather tentatively. "They will make a pen," Luna explained, "for the emus."

"Brilliant," Harry said, grinning widely. "Do we have to pay for it, or something, though?"

Luna asked and the answer was a thoughtful, contemplative no before Jia Zhen motioned them to follow him towards the building site; there were some large tents there, one of them big enough to accommodate even a dragon. There, according to the man, they would drink tea and talk in comfort.

And there was indeed tea; not just for Harry but also for Luna in a large porcelain bowl big enough for Harry to take a moderate bath in. While she tried to figure out how to drink from it, Harry stared around them with growing interest, at the Chinese workers and the Larrakia who were working in unison about the site, and at the tents around them, the huts, the obvious signs of building and design and future plans of many more buildings. Meanwhile Luna and Jia Zhen talked, Luna growing ever more confident in the language even though she still stumbled over some words, and the man had to offer her some alternatives to get her message across.

"I told him that we're here by ourselves and not with any nation," Luna said to Harry. "It seems that there's a British colony here, and something else too. Another colony I think, but I'm not sure what country's."

"Oh, so we're in the colonial period?" Harry asked with interest. "So that would be, what, the seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds?"

"I'm not sure," Luna said, thoughtfully and asked Jia something. After the man answered she considered it for a moment. "By their calendar, I think it is the early eighteen hundreds. I'm not sure though, I need to do the figures in writing before I can be sure of the year. Though who knows, the calendars might be different here."

"Well, it's still something," Harry said and sipped his tea. It was a bit bitter and had a strange flavour he couldn't place, but it wasn't all that bad – especially not after a week's straight diet of water. He probably did have tea somewhere, but since he hadn't so far bothered to make a fire, he hadn't bothered to find a tea pot either.

While he drank, Jia and Luna talked a bit more, the man growing more thoughtful by the minute. Then he seemed to suggest something judging by his tone, something that made Luna pause for a moment. "I told him that we don't really have a goal here, and that we just want to look around, and see things we haven't seen before," she explained. "And that so far we have no intention of leaving the continent. He is curious about whether or not we're intending to settle somewhere permanently."

"Like here?" Harry asked, peering out of the tent and towards the building site. It did seem like they were intending to build a whole lot more than just the pavilion. "I suppose having a permanent place to leave most of our stuff in wouldn't be too bad. You're loaded with a lot of stuff we don't need here."

"There is that," Luna murmured, and then turned to talk to Jia, who answered calmly, thoughtfully. The discussion lengthened and lengthened, with Harry still being completely lost to all of it as even the tones of questions and answers started to become incomprehensible. Eventually, while Luna kept on talking with Jia, his attention started straying away.

When one of the other Chinese came forth, saying something to Jia and Luna, it was just in time to stop Harry from dosing off. He snapped to full wakefulness as the pearly dragon at his side stood. "They've made a pen for the chicks," she said.

"Excellent," Harry said, clapping his hands together and standing up. "Let's see it then."

While Jia and the other Chinese man, Hao Qiu, both stared curiously, Harry crawled into Luna's netting and released the bonds holding the trunk. It was a bit of a task to drag it out of the netting, as it was getting a bit heavy with the birds, but he had gotten used to it during the travel and so had the chicks inside, none of whom complained much while waiting for him to free them. Which he soon enough did, releasing the chicks into the hastily made pen that had been cobbled together from pieces of wood stuck into the ground and ropes strung between them, not particularly large but good enough to hold the birds.

While Luna, judging by her amused tone, explained Jia and Hao about how they had procured the chicks, Harry's attention was caught by whistling coming from one of the sacks holding the remaining eggs, and he crawled back into the netting, to pull the sacks out. One new chick had indeed hatched, and Harry was quick to release the chick from its confinement, letting it join the others in the pen; after which he took out the bowl of water he had used to let them drink, as well as the other one to which he poured a mixture of seeds and a variety of torn greens, which the emu chicks attacked with vigour.

"Jia wants to know what we intend to do with the birds," Luna said after a moment, while some of the Larrakia had come forward to take a puzzled look at the pen as well.

"I have no idea," Harry answered with a laugh, while petting the newest chick gently and picking bits of shell from its striped fluffy feathers. "See that they live, for now. Maybe someone here can use them to start farming emus for meat and eggs or something; it would maybe make it easier to feed dragons. And yourself," he added.

"Maybe," Luna agreed, and after a moment of contemplating the birds and the remaining eggs, they returned to the dragon sized tent to continue their discussion.

Jia, it seemed, was very curious about their intention, and judging by what little of the discussion Luna translated to Harry, the man would welcome it if they thought to settle at the harbour; going as far as saying that perhaps, eventually, Luna would have her own personal pavilion. And of course, if the aboriginals didn't mind, they could surely explore the continent however they chose and be able to trust the harbour officials to keep their things safe. And if they chose to do so, coming back to the harbour periodically, perhaps Jia might beg a favour of them?

"What sort of favour?" Harry asked curiously.

"Ferrying cargo, I think," Luna said. "The other dragon, Shen Li, is busy flying between China and this port but the contract between the Chinese and the aboriginals include flying some routes along the country too, which they don't yet have the dragons for. He was asking if we'd mind, while exploring, carrying some goods to the aboriginals as well. In return, Jia offers permanent housing and perhaps some people who might work the emu farm."

"We have an emu farm now?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Jia got the impression that you intended to start one," Luna said, sighing. "Also, I think I might've made him think that you're something of a lunatic too. A rich lunatic, but one nonetheless. I'm too out of practice – I keep getting words wrong."

"I'm a lunatic? Okay then." Harry chuckled and then considered the whole carrying goods business. "Well," he said slowly. "I don't know. It's up to you I guess; I don't really have any preferences so far. Now that the chicks have a pen, and might stay here, I'm more or less satisfied with life." He thought about it. "I suppose by flying routes we might get to know the country a bit better. But it's up to you – you'd be doing all the work, after all."

Luna nodded thoughtfully to that, and then the discussion in Chinese continued, soon lulling Harry into bored doze at her side, not too bothered to miss a conversation he didn't even understand, and more or less willing to leave it to her. He only roused from his doze when Jia stood up, bowing deeply to Luna a few times before making his exit, leaving Harry and the iridescent dragon alone.

"So," he said, yawning and shaking himself awake. "What did you decide?"

"Nothing, yet. I just asked some things about the routes and the goods and so forth, and promised we'd think about it," she said, lowering her head so that she could look at him. "I wouldn't mind flying the routes every now and again, though someone would have to show them to us. And having a permanent place to come to would be nice," she admitted. "Would you mind it?"

"Not at all," Harry assured her with a smile.

"We would probably have to carry some aboriginals with us, when we went," she mused. "For translation as well as guidance. Mostly the routes are here, up north, the furthest being between here and Uluru or so I gathered, and that's enough space to cover over a dozen tribes, all with their own language."

"If we really want to, I'm sure we'll manage," Harry said, stretching. "So, where is this other dragon anyhow, the one who flies to China and back?"

"On route to China, or already there," Luna answered. "The flight takes her two weeks one way. She's not their only way of carrying goods across the ocean, or so I think, but she's their main way of carrying people – aside from the boats, and those aren't too reliable, I think."

"I see," the man answered and then shook his head. "Are we going to sit here doing nothing for two or more weeks, waiting for her to come back?" he asked then. "After all the travelling we did, I think I'd get bored."

"We might explore in the meantime; maybe carry some things, if they have things here they need carried, to get a feel for it," Luna mused and stood up. "I am a bit hungry now, though, and I thought I'd see if I can manage fishing a bit."

"Let's do that then," Harry agreed, and together they left the makeshift pavilion.


	3. Chapter 3

In less than a day, a more permanent pen was made for the emu chicks, to which a pail of water and feeding tub was added, as well as a sort of lopsided tent made from spare silk, which the birds could use for cover. Some of the Larrakia children had been put to the task of feeding the birds and keeping an eye on them; a few had managed to escape during the night, and had to be chased down across the infantile port, much to the irritation of the few workers there.

The aboriginals seemed both confused, fascinated and somehow worried about the concept of keeping tame emus around, but they weren't too much against the task; they were all hunters and gatherers, as far as Harry could see, and though the Chinese had been around for a few months now, Harry was the first to suggest keeping animals like that, as it was. So far both the aboriginals and the Chinese had been managing by fishing or gathering – or by whatever hunting could be done – and the Larrakia thought the whole endeavour was somewhat ridiculous, judging by what Harry could gather.

But at least they didn't mind the work, especially not after Harry had shared some of his now rock-hard pastries with the girls set to the task.

"Most of my food, which isn't dry or made to last, is more or less spoiled by now," he mused, after he and Luna had been given a hut to use as a storage house, and he could finally unload her harness safely. "But thanks to Hermione, I still have lots that will last years, decades if well kept."

"Why did you pack so much food when it wouldn't last?" Luna asked, peering down at the belly netting as Harry dragged one of the heavy trunks given to him by Madam Pomfrey.

"I didn't. A lot of well-meaning people made their little additions to my luggage, and I only noticed when it was already time to go," he said, laughing. "I didn't bother to start sorting them then, and just loaded everything on you, since the weight didn't seem to bother you that much; some of it might be useful, after all, and if not the things inside, then the containers they were packed in."

After a thoughtful consideration, he dragged the other trunk of Pomfrey's out as well before opening them both under the sun's blazing glare. No wonder they weighed so much; one of them was full of books, both muggle and magical, and another was full of medicinal things. Not potions, Harry was glad to notice, but bandages, herbal mixtures that were all mixed from non-magical plants, some salves and potions that were likewise non-magical, and actual muggle medicine.

"At least she knew what she was packing," Harry mused, while taking one of the books, and blinking at it. It too was about medicine; it had to do with setting bones, dressing wounds, fighting infections and burns and whatnot. The next one was about illnesses, both obscure and common – and there were some fifty, sixty books altogether. "I could study myself into a healer with all of this," he snorted, after cracking one book and finding it full of slips of paper and annotations in the margins, explaining things in simpler terms than the text itself did.

"She's always been a very sensible woman," Luna said warmly. "I used to volunteer at the hospital wing sometimes; she taught me about all the bones that a person could break while playing Quidditch. We once treated a dislocated jaw; a Slytherin boy had taken a bludger to his face."

"Ouch," Harry said without much sympathy, and closed the book. He had other books with him: the guides he had packed, a lot of things Hermione had forced on him, some more from Madam Pince and McGonagall, a few from Mrs. Weasley and Kingsley, and some more from Hagrid and Charlie, which were about dragons, but he had a feeling the medicinal texts would probably end up being the most useful. "You know what; I think I'd like you to keep carrying these two trunks, if you don't mind. They won't be of any use to us if we leave them behind when we might need them while we're out."

"Sure. They don't weigh that much," Luna said amiably, and Harry re-stowed the trunks.

Most of what he left in the storage hut was what he had no need for so far. Trunks full of winter clothing and robes, the sort of bedding that might've been called for in the Antarctic, but definitely not in Australia, the farming tools and the sacks of seeds which would survive much better in the storage, some of the books he had mentioned.

Then he went about examining his food stores, and started to compile a pile of food which was either going bad, or had already went. The greens were all more or less rotten now, as were all the pastries and sweets and whatnot; the bread was still somewhat good, a bit dry and one tightly wrapped package had a bit of mould, but he decided to keep those, just until they were completely unusable. Maybe he could use them as lures for animals, if need be.

Then there were a lot of useless things. Games, some magical trinkets that had all _spoiled_ the same way the potions had. A watch with twelve hands had gone completely black and was now as brittle as charcoal, a set of Explosive Snap cards had already turned to ash, the Gobstones were practically mere lumps of rock now, and so forth. He had four magical tents, all of which had been turned into scrubs of blackened fabric that disintegrated in his fingers. He had an entire box which had been, judging by the cover, full of Weasley Wizarding Wheezes products; when he opened it, a cloud of black smoke billowed out of it.

"I didn't think it all would spoil this badly," he muttered, while feeling around the ash inside the box; there was nothing left of the products, and no way of telling what there had been in the box in the first place, it was all turned to ash.

"A living magical being might manage without magic around them to support them, but not inanimate objects," Luna said thoughtfully. "I really hope you didn't bring that Invisibility Cloak of yours along; it would be a pity, if it too was needlessly ruined."

"No, Teddy is its proud owner now," Harry said, smiling, and pushed the box of ash aside. Then he looked through few of the personal items he had, and sighed; the photo album, composed entirely of magical photographs, was ruined, all the pictures turned black. The broom he had brought along just in case was now only that, a broom only good for sweeping floors; and with its bristles all turned black, it was less than useful as a cleaning supply. Everything else was similarly destroyed and after a while Harry stopped trying to find any that might've survived and only threw the obviously useless bit of burnt metal and ash away.

"All your things should be safe, though," he said after he was done with ridding them of the formerly magical rubbish. "The scrolls are all handmade, for the most part, and the inks, paints and the brushes are more or less muggle throughout. Though the books I had printed on scrolls for you might not have survived – the printing was done magically."

"If that was the case, then half of the books you have should've been spoiled too; most of them were printed magically. But let's check," Luna said, and they did. The scrolls hadn't been spoiled, which made Luna relax a bit, though the stiff cloth had yellowed a bit and the printed ink was more brown than black.

"So, that's about it," Harry mused, once he was done with the lot of it. He stored away most of the stuff, and then packed the linens, the medical things, some lighter summer clothing, the dry food stuff, the cooking gear, and of course all the gold back on-board Luna's harness, now much lighter than before.

 

* * *

 

All together they spent half a week in the port, before growing not quite restless and not exactly bored, but something like it. It was easy living there, with food so near at hand; it took Luna a few hours to learn how to fish from the air, but learn she did and with the prey coming to the surface if she only dropped some scraps of fish to lure them, it grew more than easy. The port itself would be interesting once it was finished, but now it was only a collection of huts and busy with building, and though Luna helped about a bit, carrying wood and stone from place to place, there wasn't much call for it, with only construction under way and the rest done better by human hands.

Jia was the one who eventually suggested that perhaps they would like to explore the north a bit while waiting for Shen Li to return. That he had some shipments he wanted distributed among the tribes who, in return for them, had been doing some woodcutting for him was unspoken but clear enough, and after some thinking Harry and Luna decided that they might as well. It called for some adjustment to her harness – she could carry out the shipment easily enough, but carrying the wood back would be harder with her rig – but Jia's people managed it in less than a day, and with the extra silk harness stowed away to be pulled out and added to Luna's rig later, they were done.

Arnurna, who seemed to have taken it upon herself to work as their aide, again offered herself for the task of being the guide. Harry and Luna learned, through two separate translations, that Arnurna's mother was from a tribe other than the Larrakia and that she was used to travelling in the northern regions, having grown up travelling; she had been Shen Li's original guide as well, when the dragon had been just learning the country's terrain.

"She would also be willing to help you learn the language of the Larrakia, if you're willing," Jia said, speaking through Luna's translation. "Most of the tribes up north speak it at least a little."

"That should work perfectly," Harry agreed, as did Luna, and with some barrels and boxes and satchels of stuff stowed away in Luna's harness, Harry and Arnurna boarded her back and soon after, they were on the way.

That first flight was relatively short, just four hours to and fro, with the loading in between taking less than hour. During it, Arnurna pointed at things like the ocean, the ground, trees, birds, and so forth, and pronounced their names in Larrakia, and both Harry and Luna obediently repeated the words until she was satisfied with their pronunciation. Around midday, the two humans shifted to the shadow of Luna's belly, but the tutelage continued all the way until they reached the Alura tribe, who were much the same as the Larrakia to Harry's inexperienced eye, except their huts were slightly different, somehow.

Arnurna handled the transaction, and a load of wood, piled up not far and bundled up with woven leather ropes, was pointed out to them. While the goods were taken from Luna's netting, Harry, Arnurna and some of the Alura went about placing the load of wood into the silken rigging, which then, once Luna's netting was empty of the extra goods, was attached to her harness.

"It's a bit different," Luna said, nosing the load of wood which hung just below her chest. "But I think I can manage."

"It isn't too heavy?" Harry asked worriedly, eyeing the load. It was a lot of wood, and to him it looked like one needed nothing less than a proper truck to carry it.

"No, not really, and the flight is not very long," she said, and settled, looking around the village curiously. "It's not a very big village. Are there any bigger around here, do you think?"

"They're all hunters and gatherers, so I doubt it. They wouldn't be able to sustain a population big enough for cities that way," Harry said and shrugged, before glaring away one curious youth, who had been inching towards Luna, eyeing the gleaming golden rings around her neck with undisguised interest. "I think we should head back, otherwise it'll be dark before we reach the port," he said, shifting forward to stand between Luna and the dark skinned youth, who sheepishly backed away.

Luna snorted, nudging at his back and nearly sending him to his knees. "He only wanted a look and wouldn't have managed to remove any of them without effort; it takes you five minutes just to put one necklace on me."

"Yeah, but I'd rather not give any of them the opportunity to try," Harry muttered, making her laugh.

They did leave soon after Arnurna had spent a moment talking with the Alura, and then headed back to the port with their load of wood – which was happily accepted at the construction site. They would form the floor and foundation of the pavilion, it seemed, which would then allow them to continue on with the supports of the pavilion roof.

Harry's and Luna's _payment_ for the short ferrying trip was the pitching up of their own pavilion like tent; as well as a spot in the harbour where Jia promised that, should they feel inclined to do more such favours, a proper pavilion would be built for Luna. As further proof of that, the emu pen was shifted next to the tent, so that Harry and Luna were just beside the chicks, which were now delighting in their new space, the new pen being three times bigger.

"Well, it's definitely not a bad place," Harry murmured, leaning onto one of the tent supports while watching the harbour. Their spot had a very nice view of the entire place, even if it was a bit further away from the rest of the buildings. It was certainly a prime place to start an emu farm, he thought a bit amusedly; though the forest sort of surrounded them from the back, there was plenty of space, and not just for the farm but maybe even for a garden and maybe some vegetable fields, if they decided to have a go at it.

"I wouldn't mind settling here, actually," Luna said, lying without a harness just beside him, yawning into the evening. The sun was just setting over the harbour, and the entire ocean seemed to glow; in half an hour, the view would be incredible. "And ferrying their goods isn't all that hard," she added. "I can carry much more than Shen Li, at any rate; she can only carry a ton at best, while Jia thinks that I can carry at least four times as much, if not more."

"Really?" Harry asked, turning to her with some surprise. "Four tons?" He had packed her with nearly a ton back in the magical world, and sure, she hadn't seemed weighed down in the least, but… four _tons_? "That's a lot."

"I don't know. It doesn't seem so much," she said, shifting to sit on her haunches and curling her long, pearly tail around her feet and hands like a cat. "I am rather big, after all. Much bigger than Shen Li, according to Jia."

"Well," he said, a bit sceptical, "if you think you can and if you want to, I'm certainly not going to stop you. It would let us learn the country a bit better – but it's not much like exploring."

"It is a big continent Harry; and there aren't that many shipments coming in yet," she said, amused. "Right now there are a few, but after that there will be weeks without anything for a dragon to do here. So we have more than enough time to do whatever we want; and we can of course take time off if we want to. We're not exactly in employment, after all, we're just… doing favours."

He shrugged. "I'm fine with it, however it is," he said, and turned to look at the harbour again. "And I wouldn't mind watching this place grow and seeing what's going to become of it," he admitted. "It seems interesting."

And interesting it was. While Shen Li was still in China, or on her way back from there, Harry and Luna saw for the first time how shipments came into the harbour. Harry had been expecting boats, maybe more dragons, though he rather doubted that one after learning that Shen Li was the only dragon who could fly such distances, but he definitely hadn't been expecting what it actually was.

One early evening, he and Luna watched how a few of the Larrakia took long didgeridoos to a cliff that stood over the beautiful bay, and started playing out the deep, droning notes of the long, pipe like instruments. The deep, earthly music went on and on without much of a break, and at first Harry thought that maybe there was some sort of aboriginal ceremony going on, or maybe the men were just practicing – but no, it had a purpose.

Answering to the call of the didgeridoos, a great serpentine creature, silver greenish in colour, covered in fin-like ridges of skin and a great deal of seaweed, breached the surface of the harbour. It was a draconic sort of great beast, but not a dragon. Jumping to his feet for a closer look, Harry soon realised what it was – a sea serpent. There were creatures like it in the magical world too, but in all honestly he hadn't been expecting them here. But, if there were dragons and bunyips, then why not sea serpents?

It was a big creature, in any case. Not quite as big as Luna, not by a long shot, but about as long as her. Impressive all around, certainly.

"Oh," Luna said, lifting her head with interest. "Can sea serpents talk here too?"

"I have no idea," Harry said, and together they watched how the aboriginals fed great big tunas to the beast, while others hurried to the beast's side to dig out something from beneath the great masses of seaweed, revealing chains attached to rings on its many fins, and a sort of netting. And, it turned out, great containers, egg shaped and obviously built to be as watertight as possible. While the beast fed on its tuna, the egg-like containers were taken to the shore and to the welcoming hands of the Chinese who gingerly settled them on the sand.

The sea serpent didn't talk, only ate its fill and then returned to the sea. Then the didgeridoo sounded again, and another serpent came forth eagerly to have its treat – and for its burden to be released.

Five beasts altogether were thusly lured to the surface and five loads emptied, adding up to some fifteen containers. Once the deed was done, the beasts fed, and the containers retrieved, the didgeridoo players retreated and soon so did the great serpents, who went to frolic about the harbour, content after having been fed.

"So, that's how they ship things here," Harry murmured, leaning on the tent supports. "I suppose it explains things. I was wondering how they did it, with their boats being so awkward and only one dragon fit to carry goods."

"It's a very interesting setting," Luna said. "And cheap too, I'd say, if the serpents don't talk or think and only want to be fed for their troubles."

Harry hummed in agreement, and together they watched how the containers were opened and checked. In some of them there was silk and porcelain, all very rich and expensive-looking. In others there were what looked like building materials; in a few there was food in great sacks, and tea, judging by the looks of them. Things to trade and things for the settlers, no doubt; though Harry had to wonder how they intended to be paid for their troubles. The aboriginals had no concept of money, after all; they traded goods for goods and he rather doubted there was much in Australia that would interest the Chinese.

"This is a _very_ interesting harbour," he said after a moment. "Let's move in."

"Yes, why not," Luna said with an amused snort and nudged his shoulder affectionately.

 

* * *

 

In the following days Harry learned a lot about the harbour and its business. It wasn't just the sea serpents that brought in goods, but also the Larrakia themselves, and some foreigners from the islands up north; in a small fleet of canoes, they came to dive sea cucumbers from the harbour and its surrounding area, which neither the Larrakia nor the Chinese seemed to mind. Indeed, when satisfied with their haul, they came to the shore not only to boil them and dry them, but to do a bit of business with the Larrakia, exchanging some goods from their islands and pearls for opals and spices from the Larrakia.

Harry watched all of this with interest, and after catching some glimpses of very pretty opals, he turned to his own treasurers and chose the smallest of his gold trinkets – a chain of gold links that had been part of one of the more elaborate rings of Luna's horns, which had been loosely attached – and exchanged it for some opals. Luna eyed him with tolerant amusement as he admired the dark stones in the sunlight, delighting in the jewels' odd, glimmering light. They shined in all the colours imaginable, and were so very pretty.

"I wonder if there's anyone around here handy with jewel cutting," Harry mused, after comparing one of the larger jewels against Luna's hide and deciding that it would be an _excellent_ centre piece for a sort of diadem, shining upon her brow.

"I doubt it," she said with a snort and he answered with a mournful sigh, before going back to polishing the stones happily.

A few days after the sea serpents had brought in their haul, Jia engaged them to do some simple work for him, which had less to do with transporting and more to do with constructing. With a few of the Larrakia to help them, they went about cutting some trees further inland, where the trees grew a bit bigger and taller, and were more suitable to be used as supports of the pavilion's pillars than the variety nearer to the shore.

It wasn't exactly grand work, and nothing Jia's people couldn't have done themselves, but it would've taken them days if not weeks, while Luna made quick work of the thing, knocking the trees down with ease, after which Harry and the Larrakia applied themselves to the removal of branches and sawing the pieces into more manageable bits. Those were then bundled up to be carried – and Luna indeed carried them without any trouble at all, taking several loads more than Jia had expected in that first day, more than enough for the first pavilion.

It wasn't the last time they were engaged in such tasks. Luna happily applied herself to the carrying and lifting and holding, and with her help the first pavilion was finished just when Shen Li finally returned from China, carrying some dozen people and half a ton of goods in her silken netting.

Shen Li was much smaller than Luna, not even a quarter of her bulk, but she was impressive in her own right. Luna had widespread wings, which made flying in Australia's warm currents very easy, but Shen Li's wingspan put her to near shame, being half again as long as Luna's despite the other dragon's smaller size. Shen Li was nowhere near as pretty as Luna, though, being pale blue in colour and not at all shiny – not that the smaller dragon seemed to much mind it.

"She says all craving must inescapably lead to suffering, and so she shall not hinder herself with any longing for a more physically pleasing self and that she is quite satisfied with what she is," Luna said thoughtfully, after conversing with the smaller dragon in her now much more fluent mandarin. The slighter dragon said something else and then turned away. "I think she might be Buddhist," Luna added. "She said she'd like to spend some time in contemplation."

"A Buddhist dragon. Well, I suppose it makes sense, since she comes from China," Harry mused. "I wonder if that's common with dragons."

"Her kind are reared to follow the Four Noble Truths and their consequences," one of the more recent arrivals, a man named Yu Xue who was a physician for dragons, explained through Luna's translation. "Because they must endure such rigorous journeys, it is better that their self-discipline is rigorous as well. Lung Shen Li is so far the most advanced and successful of her peers."

"Oh?" Harry asked, while Luna leaned in curiously and asked more.

It turned out that Shen Li's, or Lung Shen Li's, breed was a new one: there were so far only three of them, the fourth being expected to hatch any day. The Chinese had bred them specifically for long journeys; normally even the best of dragons could stay on wing for a couple of days at most and then only under desperate circumstances. This new breed however was bred with the intention of making them capable of staying on wing much longer; Lung Shen Li could manage it for two weeks.

"It tires her, however, which is why I am here, to look after her health and to make sure that if she is injured, she will have treatment as soon as possible," Yu Xue explained.

The man was justifiably proud of his job; apparently he was in pretty high standing as far as Chinese physicians went, and had been part of the breeding program since the beginning, so he knew Shen Li's breed better than most. That didn't stop the man from admiring and marvelling at Luna, and asking her a whole lot of questions about her origins and abilities.

"I'm not telling him everything; I can't very well say where we really come from, no one would believe us," Luna chuckled when Harry asked worriedly what she was telling the man. Yu Xue was resting his ear against Luna's chest, listening to her breathe with fascination, as the dragon continued. "But I did tell him that I rather like the climate here and that I probably could stay on wing for two days straight without too much trouble – he agrees, since my wings are pretty long."

"Well, so as long he doesn't get the notion of trying to dissect you, I suppose I don't mind," Harry muttered, gauging the distance between Yu Xue's head and the golden rings around Luna's neck, and deciding that the man didn't care one jot about the gold. Relaxing a bit, he folded his arms and considered the physician. "Do you think he might be willing to give me some pointers about draconic health care? Hagrid and Charlie gave me some books, but I don't know how much use they will be, if you get ill or injured or something like that." Maybe the man would even know what to do about Luna's wings; Harry really didn't like the looks of their edges, dry and cracking as they flew.

"I can ask," Luna offered, and did just that. Yu Xue didn't look too sanguine about it, but he promised to consider it.

Shen Li flew away scarcely two days after her arrival, after having eaten, rested well, and regained her strength; with her, she carried reports from both Jia Zhen and Yu Xue, and Harry had a feeling that there were mentions about Harry and Luna in those reports. He didn't mind much, as neither the newcomers nor the old settlers seemed to mind them, and still acted friendly towards them – especially once the building of the residences began, and Luna's strength once more sped up the task enormously.

"I would like to fly, however," Luna murmured thoughtfully, after a day spent in digging and preparing the foundations – which had left Harry with an evening of brushing Luna's talons clean and to a proper polish. Thankfully, Yu Xue had acquiesced to one bit of help as far as draconic healthcare was concerned, and had offered several different salves and lotions to use, one of which was doing marvels for Luna's wings and another which was very good for preserving dry and cracked scales and talons.

"We could go out exploring," Harry agreed. Though he had been busy trying to learn Larrakia and Mandarin both while Luna was working with the construction, there was very little he could do without getting in people's way. The most he could do, actually, was look after the rapidly growing emu chicks – which the girls who now considered it _their_ job didn't like all that much.

"Yes. I will ask Jia if there is something he'd like carried, and then I think we can take a few weeks away from the port," Luna decided, yawning. "I want to try how long I can stay on wing without taking any breaks, as well. If you don't mind having a bit of an experiment."

"Not at all, just as long as you're not going to get yourself hurt or sick trying it," Harry said, lifting his eyes from her now much cleaner talons and eyeing her suspiciously. He could manage long stretches of flying easily; he could stay and sleep and be very comfortable in her belly netting. But she'd have to be awake and flying and aware the whole time.

"I think I can handle it," she said, snorting and nudging at him with her snout. "Though I would like a guide along; Arnurna, if she doesn't mind it much."

"I think she'd mind if we didn't take her along," Harry said, snorting. The woman had decided somewhere along the way that Harry was a bit mad and Luna too likely to amiably agree to all suggestions put to her no matter how straining, and had become their mother hen, administrating their days with a will that would've put Mrs. Weasley to shame. Arnurna now cooked Harry's food, berated Luna whenever she forgot to eat, and usually nagged at them in mixed Larrakia and Chinese until they turned in for the day – only to rouse them the next morning with the same sort of nagging. The only reason she hadn't taken it upon herself to wash Luna after a long day of work and treat her with the ointments was because it was a task Harry wouldn't relinquish no matter how she nagged.

"She would, wouldn't she?" Luna agreed and yawned again.

The very next day they took off, with the netting packed with a few containers of water for Luna, and food for Harry and Arnurna, who didn't know of Harry's stores of dry food and thus though him likely to starve at any time. They also had a small load of goods to be taken to the Pitjantjatjara, and with those on board they took off with the intention of staying on wing day and night until Luna grew too tired to continue.

 

* * *

 

Luna's initial stamina supported her four days straight on wing, but along the days which stretched to weeks and eventually to months, it grew to a week. In those months, they travelled across the continent, back and forth between tribes and curious landmarks and the port, where they always spent a few days recovering or working with the construction before continuing on – especially so, after Shen Li returned with Jia's new orders.

"If you are willing," the chief of the outpost said, speaking slowly in Chinese, which Harry was finally starting to understand a bit – not that it helped, Luna still had to translate the words to him. "It would ease our work very much, if you would take it upon yourself to work Shen Li's routes on the continent here, so that she can concentrate on the routes between the port and China. It will save us quite bit of time."

Since Shen Li had only been flying the routes inland once or twice in two months if even so often, it wasn't a hard task; the longest flight they were tasked to do was the flight between the port and Uluru, which with Luna's growing stamina only took them two weeks at most. It left them with plenty of time to do some exploring of their own. Once their assortment of crew had come to include one Pitjantjatjara woman, Puyu, who knew as many as three languages, and a girl, Babila, from the Wiradjuri further to the south-east, who knew two, they also took to the habit of visiting a variety of tribes and helping them do some trading between themselves, which had very little to do with the port.

Of course, the women hadn't just joined – it was a bit more complex than that, as aboriginals didn't just up and leave their tribes, especially not when there were older people in those tribes. But Puyu, who was a little bit younger than Arnurna, came from slightly unusual circumstances, having recently lost her husband to a disease and before that having been thought barren, and her elders had spent a long, long while not striking the firestick – arranging her new marriage. It was thought among the Pitjantjatjara that she was bad luck, that she was diseased. So when Harry, Arnurna and Luna had came, with their need for a translator, Puyu's services had been offered.

And Babila was the last of her entire tribe and family, most of whom had been taken in the plagues a decade before, and the last having fallen to horrible ambush by the bunyips after they had failed to pay proper tribute to the beasts, having so little themselves. Babila had only survived because she had been further away, and the buniyps hadn't noticed her; the Wiradjuri had found her later, and taken her in despite the fact that their tribes had been enemies. However, the animosity lingered and the tribe hadn't grown to love her and none had wanted to perform her initiation. No one except Arnurna and Puyu, who weren't so against her and more accepting of her circumstances and fully willing to take her in. They had done just that – with the approval of the Wiradjuri elders, of course.

And thus, Harry and Luna were building a family in an odd way; with him and Luna as the elders, despite the fact that Arnurna and Puyu were both older than they were. Not that it was in any way bad. Arnurna was… nice in her own, brusque way, and Puyu had an excellent voice; even though Harry didn't understand a word, it was incredible to listen her tell and sing Babila the Dreamtime stories. And Babila, who was a good five years younger than Harry, was a welcome addition as well; though she was shy in the beginning, she grew playful soon, which added a good-humoured, rather mischievous flair to their travelling that Harry much approved of.

Regardless of the fact that they didn't have one common word between them, they could turn a stop for water or rest into a game, much to Arnurna's and Puyu's disapproval and Luna's amusement.

And of course, they all helped with the transporting of goods and the trade.

"You know, of all the occupations I considered for myself, trader wasn't one of them," Harry mused to her, while watching Arnurna, Puyu and Babila haggle among the tribesmen of Arnga. Puyu's and Babila's contributions were mostly superficial as Arnurna was the only one who knew any of the Arnga language.

"You're not a trader, Harry," Luna disagreed, whacking him lightly with the tip of her tail, which was today adorned with a thick golden ring near the tip. " _I_ am. You're just a tag-along."

"Hmph," Harry answered, folding his arms, but he had to concede a point there. Though he was trying to learn the languages, there were too many and he had never been that good with studying; unlike Luna who, even before the war had taken away the dreamy faith she had in non-existent things, had been a genius. It was a sad sort of thing to realise, but since then she was even more brilliant; though who knew if it was the war or the transformation into a dragon that had done it. Either way, she _learned_ and she learned fast.

While the only thing Harry was learning with any proper success so far was what Yu Xue was now teaching him, whenever he happened to be at the port. The higher ups who gave the port their orders – probably the Emperor himself, though Harry wasn't sure if Yu Xue got his orders directly or through half a dozen intermediaries – had acquiesced to Harry's desires, and he was now, among other things, considered Yu Xue's apprentice.

He wasn't much of an apprentice, though. He couldn't understand plainly spoken Chinese, not to mention the difficult medical terms Yu Xue used, and they had no written language between them. All the medical charts and anatomical drawings Yu showered him were no use to Harry, being in hanzi, and the labels on the man's medicine bottles and jars were equally illegible. So, in the end, Luna had to be included in all of Harry's tutelage sessions, and thus she was as much Yu Xue's student as Harry was. And naturally she was much better at understanding the material, though Harry obviously had an easier time mixing the medicines and treating wounds and whatnot.

"Oh, my kingdom for a translation spell," Harry sighed not for the first time, after having been left to study yet another anatomical chart – this about all the layers of scales and fat and muscle that dragons had.

"Wouldn't do you much good; they don't work on written languages," Luna said, though in this she wasn't much help either – she knew a bit of written Chinese, but the hanzi they used here was very traditional and very formal – and thus, very complex. It sometimes took them ten minutes to try and puzzle out just one symbol, with Harry sketching it out in the sand so that it was big enough for Luna to see.

"There are easier subjects to study and you don't need to learn this stuff," Luna added. "Not when Yu Xue is here, and willing to treat me."

"Well, it's not just that," Harry admitted, thinking back to one village further north west, which they had visited once and then very nearly gotten chased out off. It had been quarantined, with most of the villagers suffering some illness that had Arnurna, Puyu and Babila all worried. Apparently, the very same illnesses that had ravaged Babila's tribe, and many of its like, still lingered here and there, affecting those who hadn't yet suffered through it.

Having grown to consider Australia _home_ by now and the variety of tribes their friends – the people acted friendly and accepting towards them after all, they _adored_ Luna and respected Harry even if they did think he was a bit crazy – he didn't much like the idea that there was some sort of plague going about. With a trunk load of modern medicinal knowledge, another trunk load of modern _medicine_ with them, it felt horrible to not do anything.

But the problem was, as good as those books were, he didn't quite understand them yet. He didn't have the proper basics; he didn't quite dare to start using the medicine when it was all they had and he had no way of knowing if it could be replenished or not.

Having explained that to Luna, Harry added, "And, if you think about it, being a healer is damned more important and useful than being an emu keeper," with a snort. That was pretty much all he was, aside from being Luna's supposedly rich and half mad companion; after all, he had to be mad to throw all his riches at her as if she were his particularly lovely mistress, while he himself wore the same increasingly ragged robes. Though he couldn't help but feel a bit proud of his emus: twenty nine of them all together, fourteen of them females, and all of them growing fast.

"True enough," Luna agreed.

So, they travelled and studied and learned. Luna mastered her Mandarin and moved onto Cantonese while Harry still struggled with the former; and while he studied a variety of charts and texts and struggled to understand them, she moved onto her other interests. And so, while Harry translated his anatomical charts and explanations of various herbs and roots into English as well as he could, Luna brought out her own empty scrolls, inks and paints.

The first time Jia came upon them, Harry sitting by his corner of her recently pitched pavilion, with a scroll detailing the most common wing anatomy on his knees and Luna painting the harbour's vista, the man was full of approval and admiration. Luna's art at that point couldn't be called delicate, but she had grown much better with her hand coordination, and the second attempt came out much better. The third and fourth Jia and Yu both admired openly. The fifth, a fantastic aerial view of Uluru painted rather artistically with plenty of red and green which had made Harry despair about the expense of Luna's paints, they bought with silver, to be sent to the Emperor himself.

"I suppose it is very pretty, in an odd sort of way," Harry mused, examining the painting just before it was to be wrapped up for transport. It wasn't like any painting he had ever seen; there was some odd quality about it that made it in an odd way alien. It wasn't quite _abstract_ but it was _something_. More than just a scene seen from above. It didn't make the thing ugly, not at all, but no human certainly would've painted like that. "I suppose that's how you see things?" he asked, curious.

"A bit like it. It's less about how a thing _looks_ though," Luna said thoughtfully. "And more about how they feel. Or how I feel about them. The Uluru isn't impressive because it's a great lump of rock, not really. It is impressive because it is what it is, where it is, the way it is, and because of the effect it has on the people and the surrounding area and the air currents above it."

"Huh," Harry said, and looked at the painting with new eyes, tilting his head a bit. "Yeah, I think I can see that now."

The next time Shen Li flew the distance between Australia and China, she brought back a gift from the royal house to Luna, which included large rice paper canvases and a variety of colourful inks, as well as materials they intended to be used to make Luna a set of brushes. Harry, being the only one who knew how Luna's brushes had been constructed, was the one who had to make them, and the result wasn't half bad; the hair, much different from the one in Luna's older brushes, was very fine and much better for the inks, and Luna soon very nearly abandoned her older brushes in favour of her newer ones. The resulting paintings were very different from the oil paintings from before, but not bad at all.

And, of course, while they did all this, they also continued to explore. To Harry's delight one of their ventures into the country led them to the discovery of an opal vein, and he spent the way back home happily polishing a whole container full of opals which Arnurna, Puyu and Babila all agreed were his to keep, as he had been the one to find them.

"I need a jewel smith," Harry said a bit wistfully. Forget a diadem, he wanted to make series of rings and maybe a big collar for Luna, all encrusted with the opals – it would've been glorious. He would've happily melted down some of the other pieces for them, very happily.

"And here I thought you had this under control," Luna sighed, shaking her head. "Like giving a near overdose to an addict."

"I can stop anytime I want," Harry argued, but didn't look away from the great piece of rock, as big as both of his fists, which was more than half opal. Absently he wondered if he dared to try some gem cutting himself, if he could procure tools for it. It could be something relaxing to do, after a day spent trying to manage the Chinese language and its difficult medical terms, all written down for further difficulty.

 

* * *

 

The late summer turned into autumn and then into winter, which was a very interesting time. In the north the weather grew dry, and maybe _slightly_ cooler, but not by much; while far to the south, where they traded with the Gunditjmara and the Ngunnawal, it actually _snowed_. It all seemed a bit backwards to Harry, the weather being colder the further south they went while in the north it was hot and in the west there were huge fields of wild flowers blooming like nobody's business.

Of course, by the time they reached the port after their visit to the snowy territories, the winter was already more or less over. Even with Luna's stamina, they couldn't cross that sort of territory with anything less than several weeks, especially since they didn't fly with anything like a straight path, going between tribes and small settlements, as well as anything that struck them as interesting from a distance.

"It is an amazing place, so varied," Harry murmured, not for the first time, as they stopped by some particularly beautiful place to rest and stay for the night. More often than not, they even spent a couple of days in the more striking places, so that Luna could paint them and Harry could collect some samples of the local vegetation with the women, to be shown to his master later on.

One of these was eucalyptus, much to his delight, which grew much bigger in the south east. Its not quite _discovery_ led, after the long journey back and some curious experimentation, to the invention of a very nice, soothing oil which worked wonders on sore throats and congested sinuses – and it made some lovely tea. Harry and Luna were told to bring as much of it back from their next trip as they could – and seeds and saplings, if they could manage it.

"You know, looking at this place and these people makes me wonder if I ought to tell them about all the gold in Australia," Harry murmured, looking over the harbour one night from their pavilion. It was rapidly growing, with Shen Li bringing more people in with each pass while Luna contributed to the construction of the bigger buildings. "I wonder what it would do to the economy here."

"Didn't you say there were some gold rushes because of it?" Luna asked, glancing up from her latest paintings. "I seem to recall you saying something about it."

"Yes, there were. Several," Harry agreed, folding his arms. "Of course, it was mostly Europeans, Americans – westerners in general – who benefited. Right now, if the year is what we think it is, no one knows that there's any gold here, and I think the Europeans only use this place as a prison colony."

Not that they had much proof of that, expect from what little they had learned from the western and eastern tribes, mainly from the Gundungurra, who inhabited the mountain region blocking Sydney from the rest of the continent. Harry hadn't yet seen a single westerner in Australia, only the Aboriginals and the Chinese. Not that he was in any hurry to change the fact; he was perfectly content where he was, learning the languages and the medicine and everything else. The addition of more people, even if they could speak English, would only confuse the situation further.

"Prison colony. Nice," Luna said and sighed, lowering her fine, bear hair brush. "Don't you think it would ruin this place? If people knew there was gold, they would rush in as quickly as they could to take it. No one would care one jot what the aboriginals thought, or what gold mining would do to them."

"True, true," Harry said. "I am not going to say anything, even if it would be pretty nice to discover gold…" he added a bit wistfully, making her whack him across the shoulders with her tail tip. "You are a horrible and abusive mistress and if you don't watch it I will give all my jewellery to Shen Li," the man grumbled, after regaining his balance.

"She wouldn't accept a single trinket," Luna snorted amusedly. "Not that I would mind if you did, at least then people here would stop thinking that you're a lunatic who's in love with a dragon."

"Don't worry: I only want you for your looks," Harry assured her, and quickly avoided another tail whack.

It was during that winter that they saw for the first time the sort of gathering which would eventually become commonplace in the Chinese/Larrakia port. How the Chinese had sent the word out, Harry wasn't sure, but it was answered when a few ships made their way to the harbour: a Dutch vessel, and a Spanish one, and then one from Portugal, all merchants and all there to trade. Jia Zhen not only welcomed them, but arranged a banquet for their captains and first lieutenants, housing them in the dragon pavilion where Shen Li slept whenever she was at the port – and both Harry and Luna were invited.

"Well, damn," Harry mused after receiving the invitation, and Arnurna, Puyu and Babila all rounded on him about his clothing. Luna was always fit to enter any banquet, of course, mostly because Harry was mildly obsessed in her appearance, but he didn't much care for his own. He usually only wore his thinnest robe and not much else. The women though, who had now become his family, with Arnurna having taken the position of mother, Puyu his aunt and Babila his younger sister, didn't approve.

"It is ragged," Babila said. She had been learning a bit of Mandarin in the port, her youth helping her there more than Harry's did, as he was now nineteen and losing a child's flair for learning. "And it is torn and it is dirty and it has holes – and you have much nicer things. I know you do, I have seen them."

"But they're all so damned hot," Harry said in his own broken but understandable Mandarin. All his robes had been made for British weather; in Australia they were only good in winter time, and only then just barely, as he didn't live in the south where it got that cold.

"Silk wouldn't be so hot," Luna offered, peering into the harbour consideringly.

"Yes, yes, silk will do very well," Arnurna agreed and without waiting for Harry's approval all the females, with Luna's amused approval, headed to ask Jia whether or not such clothing could be arranged for their idiot of a son/nephew/brother.

"Why did we ever take them in?" Harry asked Luna mournfully. "They're starting to become too much trouble."

"So speaketh the pot," she snorted and threw her head back in amusement, making her horn rings jingle.

But no, silk robes weren't any lighter than Harry's own – silken though they may have been, they were so heavy with embroidery that they might as well been made of wool. But once they had been acquired with some trouble on the part of the women, Harry couldn't reject them and with the help of a somewhat amused Yu Xue he even learned how to wear them properly.

"I will get you something more appropriate for a physician," his teacher promised, chuckling. "They tend to be less elaborate."

"Get me something like what the workers wear instead. Robes are a bit awkward when flying," Harry said, glancing longingly at the simple black trousers and white jackets of the men working on laying out a street not far away.

Luna just snorted at him, shaking her head and wondering how someone so inclined towards all things sparkly could distain it on his own person.

"Just because I like sparkly things doesn't mean I don't like comfort too. Besides it is easier to admire things on someone else, unless you're surrounded by mirrors and like to look at yourself – and I've seen many prettier people than I am," Harry muttered, looking down at the robes and loosening the collar a bit. "Though I’ve got to admit – these are _very_ nice. I wouldn't mind wearing them at all, if it wasn't so warm."

The ball itself was pretty nice – there was plenty of food and even Luna feasted on fried fish stuffed with who knew what, and even some of the very few pigs they had in the port. Not far from her, Harry was trying to figure out the chopsticks, all the while puzzling through a very difficult conversation with a Larrakia elder, who spoke in an accent that made it difficult for Harry to understand him.

But it wasn't a bad sort of affair. Arnurna, Puyu and Babila seemed to enjoy it well enough, as did Luna, and the splendid demonstration of the Chinese's peculiar form of shipping by the end of it was a very nice climax for the whole thing – all the sea captains very nearly jumped to their feet at the sight of the tamed sea serpents, summoned to the surface by the Larrakia Didgeridoo players.

"Do they this often?" the Spanish vessel's first lieutenant, who knew a bit of English, asked Harry with wild eyes.

"Once every two months or so," the younger man answered, happily setting down his useless sticks. "They are constantly teaching more serpents, though, so the shipments are getting bigger and they hope to make it once a month, soon."

He was asked a few more questions, as all the merchant captains realised that he could speak English, somewhat understandable Mandarin, and Larrakia, and wasn't adverse to explaining. A whole lot of language was going about the table, in fact, with the Spanish lieutenant translating the questions from all the others, who translated theirs from one language to another through French more often than not.

No, the serpents hadn't yet eaten anyone in the harbour, or touched the vessels there – not even the Macassar fishing boats and the Malay divers which came to fish for sea cucumbers. Yes, most of the serpents did manage the journey; the Chinese only had them carrying goods once they had managed the trip a few times. Yes, most of the containers did survive, and the Chinese were improving the water sealing. No, Harry wasn't sure what sort of trade the Chinese were planning, the captains would have to ask that themselves. And yes, most emphatically, the port was open for all who could make the trip, so long as their intentions were honourable.

"And the dragon?" one of them asked, looking at Luna, who was holding her head still while Babila wiped her snout of the smears of her dinner. The girl cast guilty glances towards Harry, who usually guarded such tasks jealously. "Is it one of their beasts – will there be more?"

"Luna?" Harry asked with surprise. "No, she's an Australian dragon." Which was a bit of a mistake, as he couldn't explain it.

But thankfully, the captains weren't that interested; their interest was in the goods, which they contemplated between them. Silks and porcelain, of course. Maybe tea? And would there perhaps be a way to order specific goods, specific sorts of porcelain perhaps? As they talked about it amongst themselves in French, which Harry couldn't understand beyond a couple of words, he let his attention stray, just in time to see one Portuguese man inching his way closer to Luna, his eyes nailed to the ring around her tail.

"Excuse me," Harry said with forced calm, catching the Spanish lieutenant's attention. "Tell the Portuguese gentleman that if his man takes one more step, I won't be accountable for my actions."

The threat translated, the Portuguese captain noticed his man and hurriedly called him back, paling a bit at the sight of how close the fellow was to trying to seal the artistically carved golden ring – and the dragon it was attached to. Luna, only now noticing, glanced backwards and then flicked her tail a bit at him, more amused than bothered, which was enough to send the man skittering backwards.

"You know, one of these days someone is going to steal one of these trinkets of yours," Luna said, startling the merchants one and all. "And then where will you be? You'd be much better off storing them away somewhere safe."

"And deprive myself from the chance of admiring them on you? Never," Harry answered, but with a frown. Maybe it was better to leave off the tail ring, which was easiest by far to remove than any of the rest.

Thankfully there were no further attempts – especially not the following day, when the Chinese merchandise was revealed, and the captains and their crews realised that they were about to become rather wealthy. While the trading went on at the beach, Harry stored away the tail ring with a mournful sigh and then considered the grounds around their pavilion – and their emu farm.

"Do you think we should start a garden?" he asked, eyeing the empty space between the now sectioned emu pen and the pavilion.I It was a _lot of space_ , and very lively space too, after a small trickle of water had been diverted to run by it, forming a smallish pond just nearby where Luna could easily drink from it. "It's going to be spring soon, and if we start now we might have a respectable looking place by summer time."

"I would like it, but what would we grow?" she asked thoughtfully.

"I don't know. I have a lot of seeds to choose from, though," he said, thinking of the sacks that had been sitting in the storage hut since their arrival. "I suppose we could try everything, and see what grows."

While the merchant finished their transactions, Harry and Luna – and Arnurna, Puyu and Babila, though the three of them joining in only somewhat reservedly – turned to the seeds and the garden, and started negotiating the means of irrigating the dry soil and turning it better suited for gardening.

 

* * *

 

As winter turned to spring, and then to summer, Harry got more than enough chance at working both with the garden and the emu farm, after the stupidest of mistakes left him a bit invalided. During one of the many trading trips, his foot got caught in Luna's harness just as she had shifted. The harness had tightened, Harry had lost balance and with an almost contemptuously simple move, they had together broken his leg, the bones not standing against the sheer strength of Luna's simple motion.

"Oh, for god's sake, it's not your fault," Harry said for the umpteenth time, after she had hurriedly delivered him to Yu Xue, who had wrenched the bone into place with the most horrible noise. "I could've been more careful too, I should've gotten used to clambering about the harness by now."

"But it would've never have broken if I hadn't turned," Luna complained, downcast and head bowed, while the women looked over them worriedly.

"Well it did and that's that. It's fine, you silly bird; it's only broken, and it's not like I'm going to lose the damned leg. It's just going to take some time for it to heal," Harry sighed, taking hold of the makeshift crutch and limping to her side. Yu gave him some disapproving glances as he did, but he ignored the man and stepped forward until he could lean against Luna's cheek. "It's just a leg. It'll heal."

She still sulked a bit about it, and offered to carry him everywhere – which wasn't very practical, as he didn't really need to go anywhere, with Arnurna there to make the food, and Babila more than willing to run errands and Puyu to keep him entertained with or without his approval – and of course Yu, who by the gleam of his eyes was already planning some horribly vigorous lessons for him. Harry ignored it all the best he could and instead took the opportunity to work in the garden – his _own_ garden, for once, rather than the Dursleys' horrid thing, and without a lawn, too, which he very much approved.

"You are such a strange man," Puyu, who was very good with languages and had been learning Larrakia from Arnurna faster than Harry or even Luna had, sighed at the sight of him, leaning on the crutch with one hand and heaving a shovel with the other. "You ride on a Rainbow Serpent, you have more gold than you can carry, you tame _ankerr_ and make plants grow," she said. "You make no sense."

"Well, making sense would be a bit boring, now wouldn't it?" Harry asked, grimacing slightly and rubbing a hand along his thigh. His leg had been supported with splints below the knee and in all honesty he shouldn't be walking about, but he wasn't good at lying down and doing nothing either. Especially not with Yu and Luna hovering about him.

Puyu considered him for a long moment, and a bit obstinately he did the same. She was a beautiful woman, dark skinned, large eyed and slim but strong with the sort of wiry muscle all the aboriginals had – and, naturally, naked save for a loincloth. Not that it mattered much to Harry, really; even if his adolescent hormones hadn't died a quiet death somewhere along the way, leaving him rather uninterested in such things, he had by now grown entirely too used to it to be roused by any naked flesh.

She smiled and sighed. "If someone were to strike the firestick for you, would you even notice?"

"Probably not," he agreed, shaking his head, and then considered her. "I imagine you would want it, though. Not with me, obviously, but with someone."

Puyu considered it, then glanced towards Babila and Arnurna, who were preparing dinner together by the fire pit that the Chinese workers had added to their residence. "NotI. Babila might, perhaps, one day. Arnurna…" She made a sort of shrugging motion and then stood. "Who knows. We have no elders and our group has no men."

"Arnurna is of the Larrakia, someone might still choose for her," Harry mused.

The woman laughed. "Oh, no, we're none of us of the Larrakia, or of the Pitjantjatjara, or the Wiradjuri. We are of Lu-na, and of Har-ry," she said almost teasingly, pronouncing the names in rather exaggerated manners. "And our tribe is sorely lacking in males."

"Huh," Harry said – he hadn't realised that he had uprooted them all from their tribes, Arnurna included. "Well, damn," he said in English, and not for the first time lamented the lack of goldsmiths. He had a desperate urge to have some of his pieces melted down and redone, so that they could wear them. After all, if they were _his_ tribe, then they all ought to look the part.

"Luna, what do you say to building a forge?" he asked consideringly sometime later. He turned one of the golden rings she never wore – an elaborate three piece with a beautiful draconic carving, very impressive, which would've gone around her wing fore-arm. He weighed it in his hands – a good half a pound of gold. It would've made a lot of jewellery for the women. "I watched all the pieces made; I should be able to do it, with the right tools."

"Oh, dear," she answered with a long-suffering sigh. "Can't you just ask Jia Zhen if they could suffer to hire a jewel smith to move here? The opals alone should make _someone_ interested. And can't you sit down, for Merlin's sake? You shouldn't be putting weight on that leg."

"I'm not!" Harry objected. "You'd know if I was – I'd be wailing in pain. See? Not wailing."

Harry didn't suggest the concept of hiring a jewellery smith to Jia. He didn't really need to – the man already had some considerations to that end, after watching the tribesmen bringing in increasingly exquisite jewels to trade with the Malay drivers for pearls and whatnot. "It would do to have someone who can gauge their value," the man murmured, examining one opal of his own – a very light shaded, glittering specimen that looked almost like ice with a rainbow trapped in it.

But in any case, that was a long way off and in the meantime Arnurna, Puyu and Babila had not exhibited any anxiety over their lack of jewels or anything of the sort – and why should they, when gold, aside from how pretty it looked, didn't have much value in their society. They valued pearls more than they did gold, or even opals – which tended to be the reason for most of the admiration Luna gained, rather than the jewellery she wore.

"Not that I can blame them," Harry mused, eyeing Luna proudly. He and the women had finally managed to make a proper sort of oil to use on her skin – a mixture of animal fat and eucalyptus oil which didn't smell at all bad and made Luna's scales shine even brighter than they had before – and, by some quirk of the fat, it even protected her scales from some of the dust and sand. So, she looked nice and she smelled even better.

Which was good, since some weeks into Harry's injury, they got a new shipment via the sea serpents, and after entertaining another batch of foreign merchants as his guests, Jia needed the rest of the goods carried further south – which was the agreement with the Larrakia, whatever Jia couldn't trade was given to them, to trade as they wanted.

"Well, it's not like you particularly need me," Harry said, after Luna had noted that it would be strange, flying without him. He couldn't climb aboard her with his broken leg with anything like comfort, and most likely wouldn't for several weeks, if not months. "I can't speak the Pitjantjatjara language, and I'm bad at trading. Arnurna and Puyu are of much better use to you."

"True, you are a bit of a useless lump as far as that goes," she agreed, making him huff offendedly. "But are you sure you're safe without me here?"

"Safe from what?" Harry asked, looking around in their rather magnificent pavilion and snorting. "The worst thing that could happen is Yu deciding to move in and not give me peace from his charts and texts, which he's probably going to do anyway. And after that no one else would bother us because they're all scared of him."

Well, they didn't fear the Chinese physician; Yu just had a very peculiar way of being amused by everyone and everything, like the whole world was a big joke and only he knew the punch line. Or like everyone had something highly hilarious about them, and Yu was the only one who had noticed. Most people from the tribes were easy-going folk, but even they could handle being laughed at for only so long, so the Larrakia had learned to avoid the man out of self-defence.

"True." Luna sighed and nudged at him. "I still shouldn't be leaving you."

"I'll be fine," Harry said, laughing softly. "I'll work in the garden and watch over the emus – oh, by the way. If you just _happen_ to see some emu flocks that might have nests, see if you could get some eggs? All of ours are so far are from three different clutches, but I have no way of knowing which bird is from which clutch, which will make it awkward to start breeding them."

"You can't start breeding them yet, they aren't even a year old yet," Luna said, blinking and turning to look at the emu pen – the birds had gotten much bigger, but they weren't yet fully grown. Not quite, anyway.

"Well, not yet. But eventually," Harry said, shrugging and eyeing the pen – as well as the stables built for the birds to get some shade in the hotter time of the day. "I just would like to have some options when we finally get there."

"Alright. If we see any, I'll see if we can find some nests," Luna promised.

A day later they were off, and for the first time since coming to this reality Harry was alone. Of course, it didn't last long; Yu roped him into preparing medicine and mixing herbs, taking full advantage of the fact that Luna's pavilion was empty and could be used freely.

"You grow herbs here, I see," the physician noted, examining the garden Harry and Luna were nurturing – well, mostly Harry, but Luna was a godsend for watering.

"Some, yes. Most of the things I planted didn't grow, while others are practically weeds." Harry sighed, glancing up from the root he had been grinding. "What do you think, teacher Yu?"

"It is very fine. However, I would suggest using better fertilized soil on some of these," Yu said, taking hold of one rather lopsided, sad looking plant. "Have you considered using Luna's faecal matter? I hear dragon waste answers very well as a fertilizer."

"…really?" Harry asked slowly, trying not to think about it much and ending up doing just that. He shuddered a bit.

"Well, if you find it does not answer, perhaps Shen Li's," Yu said with some amusement. "She is so rarely here, and time and the soil of the pits breaks down some of the worst odours. However, you shouldn't distain such things, student, not if you ever wish to be a proper physician."

"I'll settle for being half a proper physician, teacher Yu, but I see what you mean," Harry said, and sighed. Life in the other world had taught him to be too picky about these things – but Yu was probably right. And it wasn't like he was going to find industrially made fertilizer here. "So, dragon waste. And that works?"

His teacher nodded, giving him another amused look. "Very well, I hear."

It was just as well that Luna wasn't there, nor any of the women, since their language expertise was needed in the trading; Harry made a bit of an idiot out of himself, digging around Luna's waste pits and then, all the while making faces, making a mixture of dry earth, making it something like what one might've bought in big plastic sacks in the other world. That helped him get over worst of the weirdness about the whole thing, and in the end he used the stuff to make several new rows in his garden, to be planted with all the things that so far had declined to take root, and all the things which had but only poorly.

"Of all the things I thought I'd do with my life," Harry murmured, shaking his head. All his childhood he had hated gardening – though mostly because in the Dursley household it included cutting the lawn and he had been terrified of the lawnmower since he had been three or so. Here it was different, though; most of the things he grew were either medicinal or edible. And it looked pretty, especially since someone from the Chinese settlers had, during one of his and Luna's travels, come in and expanded the pond, reinforcing the edges and bottom with stones. One of these days Harry expected he would come back and find goldfish in the thing.

Not that he'd _mind_ of course. Goldfish were his favourite type of fish, when he thought about it.

All in all, though, he had very little to complain about in his life. He had an excellent place to live in, he had a good standing in this odd, Chinese/aboriginal society, and he had a livelihood, sort of. Well, he would have a livelihood, once he learned a bit more medicine, with the emu farming being sort of a side job, perhaps. Once the birds got old enough to breed.

Shaking his head, Harry limped away from the garden and back into the shade of the pavilion, wondering what he could use to tempt the Larrakia boys to water the garden for a while, even though he was present. Usually they only did so when Luna and Harry were away – just to get closer to the girls who looked after emus, most of the time – but Harry wasn't in good enough shape to carry buckets.

Luna's absence that first time didn't last more than handful of days, being a very short transport, and the few following that one weren't any longer. Harry recovered slowly, slower than he was accustomed to. "Lack of magic," Luna explained. "Wizards heal generally faster than muggles, but you're not a wizard anymore." But he didn't mind it that much. There was nothing bad about being grounded for the moment, and with Yu around he was never really bored.

And he had more time to spend with the foreigners. Jia had somehow managed to insert a sort of schedule to the parties he held and so, every now and again, foreign merchants came in, Jia entertained them in the general dragon pavilion where Shen Li was usually housed, and all the parties ended in the spectacular showing of the serpents as they came to the shore to deliver their goods and receive their just rewards.

Harry, with his growing vocabulary of Larrakia and Chinese was more often than not the translator in these events. Though he was starting to fear that he'd have to learn French, too, he didn't particularly mind it. The need to make himself understood was as good a motivator as any, and he was getting the hang of being a schoolboy once more, so much so that he actually ventured to ask the foreign captains if perhaps they had some literature they wouldn't mind trading – he had a lot of opals nowadays, and he wouldn't have minded it too much to part with some of them.

This way he bought himself some French books from a Portuguese merchant, some English from a American one and, most fortuitously of all, he managed to buy several copies of varying newspapers, a few of them even from jolly old England.

"Invasion?" he murmured, while sitting on the beach and examining his purchases. "Britain was _invaded_?"

"Yes, in early December of the year seven," the American captain agreed, frowning a bit. "It was a sorry business and make no mistake, judging by what I've heard – I hear they raked London through, tore down buildings left and right to make space for their beasts," the man added, and then explained.

Apparently the French had invaded Britain with a great force of men and _dragons_ , which apparently were used mainly for warfare in Europe. It had started bloody and ended bloodier, with skirmishes fought here and there and storages and fields burned throughout the kingdom. The invasion had lasted until March of the next year – _that_ year, it turned out that the year currently was eighteen o' eight – when the British had beaten the French in the Battle of Shoeburyness.

"Ah, to hear it from the mouths of the Britons," the American said, with an odd sort of exasperated sigh. "Greatest feat of heroics and tragedy all at once, what with Nelson killed and the whole country weeping." Shaking his head, he turned away to attend to the trade.

"Nelson?" Harry murmured under his breath and turned to the paper, trying to remember what little he could of his muggle schooling. "Horatio Nelson? Wasn't he killed in Trafalgar in eighteen o' five?" Well, what did he know, really; it was a different world, with dragons and without any magic. It was a bit shocking that there was _any_ Nelson at all, not to mention the _same_ Nelson.

After the trading was over, and the Larrakia turned to claim what remained, Harry gathered his own meagre purchases and started making his awkward way up to Luna's pavilion. At least now he knew where they stood, as far as the time went. It was late December, eighteen o' eight – which naturally in Australia was summertime. That meant that they had been in this world for a year and half or so.

"Time well spent," he decided, and went about putting his new books away.

 

* * *

 

Harry was still limping, some weeks later, when one of Luna's trips to Uluru and back brought back a dragon egg.

"What?" he asked, a bit confused, when he saw the thing; it was large, rather impressively so, even in its protective swaddling, and very, very obviously a dragon egg. Harry had by now read enough literature about dragon breeding under Yu's critical eye – he had even been given a variety of eggshells to examine. There was only one thing. "I thought there weren't any dragons nearby. Where did you get the thing?" The closest would be up in the islands north of their harbour, in Java and the rest of Indonesia – which wasn't called anything of the sort yet – but those people guarded their dragons about as jealously as the Chinese.

"The way I gather it went is that the Wiradjuri took it from the westerners who came over the Gundungurra's lands," Luna said, while Babila, Puyu and Arnurna stepped down from her harness. "And then the Wiradjuri took it to the Pitjantjatjara via some other tribes, who then had me carry it here."

"But why?" Harry asked, confused. "With you here and Shen Li every now and then, why do they think they need another dragon?"

"I think they've learned more from you than you realise," Luna said, snorting. "Somehow they know that dragons learn language in the shell and they figured that it would be the easiest way to go about the difficulty of languages. So, the egg was passed from hand to hand, people talking as much as they could near it, so that it would learn as many languages as possible. If I'm not mistaken, the dragon ought to hatch with at least half a dozen under her wing."

"Ah," Harry said, and thought back. Yes, he did recall that the last time they had seen the Wiradjuri, he had been in the process of studying some of the intricacies that had to do with dragon eggs and hatchlings – the concept that they learned things through the shell had been fascinating for both him and Luna. Babila must've been translating their musings to the tribe. "And so they stole the egg from the westerners of Sydney. Great."

"Well, the westerners were in the Wiradjuri lands, so they can take what's left unattended, by their law," Luna mused, settling down and watching while a bit baffled-looking Jia and Yu examined the egg before setting out to make a hatching enclosure. "And the way I understood it, I can't really blame them – there were some three dragons there, when they took the egg and –"

"There are western dragons on the continent?" Harry asked, a bit alarmed.

"Seems like it, yes," Luna agreed. "Two as big as me, apparently." She gave him a sideways glance and exhaled a long breath, nudging at him. "Oh, don't worry about it that much. You know as well as I do that once a dragon hatches and makes up her mind, there is very little anyone can say about it – if the beast wants to go back, then she will and that will be that, and if she doesn't, then the westerners can't very well argue much against it."

"Yes, but _three dragons_ , two of them as big as you," Harry said uneasily, and eyed her with concern. Luna was big and impressive – but not much of a fighting dragon. She wasn't like the Hungarian Horntails with their arrays of spikes and horned tails, or like the Norwegian Ridgebacks with their borderline armoured backs. As far as Harry could tell, Luna was rather fragile-skinned, as far as dragons went – he had never heard pf anyone using Antipodean Opaleye hide in protective gear, and for a good reason. Originating from the Antipodes areas, and being the only dragon breed within a thousand miles, they hadn't had many rivals up to their size, and according to Luna Antipodean Opaleyes were as friendly and peaceful as dragons ever got.

The idea of her in a fight with _two_ dragons her size… it made Harry's blood run cold.

"Well, I am no lightweight, mind you," Luna snorted. "And the westerners can't very well start making a quarrel in this port without causing an international incident with China – and I think there is no country in this world who would quarrel with _China_."

"Well, no." Harry had to concede to that point. China, with their aerial core of thousands of dragons – plus several tens of thousands of civilian dragons – wasn't something any other country on this world could match. And the Australian port was, in a way, protected by that threat of sheer numbers. But still….

Whatever had possessed the Wiradjuri? Nervousness at seeing dragons in their lands, dragons whom they didn't know? Probably. Luna travelled the routes fairly often, but not _that_ often – not often enough to be there all the time, if Sydney decided to start building itself a dragon colony and threatening the neighbouring tribes.

"Well, I suppose there is nothing we can do about it now," Harry murmured, running a hand along Luna's cheek. "And if the tribes decide to do something like this, it's within their rights and who am I to say otherwise. Excuse me for a moment, would you, love? I think teacher Yu wants me."

"Yes, yes. I want my harness stripped anyway, and then I will have something to eat," Luna said, sitting up and stretching her wings. "Will you wash me later, or shall I ask the women to do it?"

"I will do it, of course," he answered, waving a hand. "I'll be there before evening, I promise."

He and Yu spent some time examining the egg, measuring it and testing the shell – it was hard and smooth to the touch, and likely to hatch within a couple of days. "Pity," Yu said, sighing. "If there was a little more time, we could introduce the dragonet to Chinese in the shell, but there is no time. And what time there is left will have to be preserved to Larrakia, as it is the language it is more likely to need here."

"I suppose," Harry agreed, running a hand along the smooth shell, so different from the rather rough emu-eggs he had handled once. "So, are Western eggs very different from Chinese ones?" he asked curiously.

They were in some aspects, but not in others – Chinese eggs tended to be one coloured while this one was striped with paler and darker shades of its overall colour. Yu couldn't tell much about the dragonet itself before it hatched, but judging by what sounds he could hear through the shell, it was healthy and well formed, and more or less content – which boded well for its constitution. "It is most likely going to be middling in size – only half of Luna's size at most," Yu said. "But that is already enough for it to carry at least a ton or two of weight by itself."

"Which is at the moment all the tribes need," Harry agreed.

Soon after they relinquished their possession of the egg, and spent a moment instructing the women who would be taking care of the dragonet in how to handle it. They were to talk as much as they ever could around the egg, talk from dawn to dusk and through the night, every moment filled with words – that way just two days would be enough for the dragonet to learn the language.

"We will have Luna taking care of the dragonet's first feeding," Yu added. "If she doesn't mind. It would be detrimental to the tribes' wishes, should the dragonet grow fond of any one person. No, better have it fed by a dragon and grow used to having many people around her, rather than one particular person."

"Yes, that would probably be for the best," Harry agreed, and so did the women, all of whom very much liked the idea of flying on a dragon the way Arnurna, Puyu and Babila did. Most of them were very young though, girls barely done with their initiation, and the eldest of their group, Binmuck, was their teacher and guide. She was also very intent on their future duties as the dragonet's companions, should the dragonet choose so – and so she became a frequent visitor at Harry's and Luna's pavilion, learning as much as she could.

"Well, I don't know what I can do for you, aunt," Harry said a bit apologetically in Larrakia. "Luna is not like most dragons, I understand, and Shen Li is more different still. The dragon that you will hatch will most likely be of the more… common variety, if Yu's expertise is to be trusted in."

"And what is a _common variety_ of dragon like?" Binmuck demanded to know, which Harry couldn't answer much. All he could tell were the basic facts of dragons and dragonets – that early on they ate a lot, slept more, and learned fast, which would be the best time to teach the dragonet what it had yet to learn, maybe even teach it Chinese if it could be managed. Ply the creature with food and maybe jewels if it was so inclined, and it was likely to be as happy as it could be.

"Though you must keep in mind that dragons grow sentience very early on," he added as a warning. "It might be that the creature grew fond of the white men and will choose to return to them rather than to stay with you."

"We will keep it in mind," Binmuck said and returned to the other pavilion, where the dragon egg was kept in constant warmth and comfort, surrounded with chatter and Dreamtime stories, all in Larrakia.

"Why is it that I have a bad feeling about all of this?" Harry asked with a sigh after coming to Luna's side with a still lingering limp. "A dragon egg stolen from western colonists. It can only turn out badly."

"Stop being such a pessimist. It will be fine," she said, and reached her head to look at him. "Will you wash me now, or later? I was thinking of having a nap."

"Now is as good a time as any," he decided and after informing the women about where he was going, he changed the simple Chinese garments he nowadays wore into a loincloth before gathering some rags and brushes and the eucalyptus oil, and together they made their way to the shore.

"I have to admit one thing, though," Luna said, bobbing idly on the waves while Harry dived about her sides, vigorously scrubbing the red sand and dirt away. "I wouldn't mind meeting the western dragons. They're from Sydney, so they probably all know English."

"Yes, probably. I wouldn't mind it myself, so long as they don't start making trouble," Harry muttered with a frown. He hadn't heard all that many good things about how dragons in Europe were treated – more like animals than sentient creatures. Unlike in China, where Luna's sort of dragon, who would rather spend her time painting and reading, were more common than the reverse, all European beasts were either fighters or breeding more fighters.

"You know, you lost your patriotism fast," Luna noted, as Harry climbed up her side to scrub underneath her wing, where some dirt had gotten stuck. "So little care for the Britons."

"I wouldn't say I was ever patriotic," Harry disagreed. "Nor can I say I was fond of Britain as a whole. My corner of it, sure, I loved it to bits, but not the whole country. I hadn't seen enough of it to love it. I've seen much more of Australia in the last year and half than I ever saw of the British isles."

"True enough," she said, and nearly threw him off by turning in the water, so that she was bobbing on her back rather than on her belly and her wings were completely submerged. Sputtering a bit, Harry crawled onto her stomach, shaking the water out of his hair. "Sorry," the dragon said without much remorse at his glare, and stretched out her forehands. Harry continued scrubbing her chest and belly while grumbling.

"What do you think about having a dragonet about?" he asked, once he was done and taking a break on her chest.

"I'll know when the beast hatches. I don't mind, overall – it would be nice, to have someone else flying the routes too, and it will speed up the building here, too," Luna said, yawning contently at the evening glow in the distance, which made it seem like the entire ocean was in flames. "I just hope the dragonet won't be annoying or ill-tempered. Everyone here is so amiable and nice that it would really ruin the atmosphere, to have a greedy, irritating dragon about."

"True, true," he answered, stretching himself out on her scales and sighing contently. "Have you ever thought of having kids? Or dragonets, I suppose."

"Not really, not since I became a dragon," she admitted. "It's not the same, after all. Dragons don't have maternal feelings, and I don't either. Eggs? Maybe, I suppose I wouldn't mind it all that much. But once they hatched…" She shifted and looked down at him. "How about you? Would you like to have someone strike the firestick between you and some nice girl and then have some kids?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it much, really," he admitted. "Ever since Voldemort, and then with the illness with my magic… I lost interest. It wasn't important. Since then I've been too busy being alive to bother thinking about it. I suppose I wouldn't _mind_ it, at some point, some far off future date. Not now, though. I'm content with things being as they are right now, no kids needed."

He craned his neck to see her and smiled. "So for now, it's just you and me, love."

"And Arnurna, Babila and Puyu," Luna added.

"And them, yes. But who knows if they will stay with us," he murmured. It wasn't the way of the aboriginals to abstain the way Arnurna and Puyu were, and Babila would eventually be of marrying age. Even if they and everyone else considered them to be of Harry's and Luna's tribe, they didn't really _have_ a tribe. Not unless some men joined it for some reason or another and Harry – or Luna probably – would be forced to do the firestick striking for them. Which was rather unlikely.

The whole matter was entirely too tiresome to think about just then, though. Yawning, Harry glanced up at Luna. "Should we head back before we fall asleep here and drown ourselves?" he asked.

"Perhaps we should," Luna agreed, and dropped Harry into the water by turning over again.


End file.
